Plot
Tim (Domhall Gleeson) is a 21-year-old wallflower, living in amiable safety with his eccentric family in the grassy heights of Cornwall, including his Dad (Bill Nighy), Mum (Linday Duncan) and hippy sister Kitkat (Lydia Wilson). Yearning for love, his father tells the unwitting Tim that he can, in fact, travel in time and so, with hope in his heart, the young pretender takes off for London. There he meets American publisher Mary (Rachel McAdams) and sets out to win her heart and the perfect family life with nothing but his wits, charm…and that time travel trick.
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| SMILING? In the RAIN? It must be love! |
Review
Richard Curtis, on top of being one of Britain’s most successful and prolific comedy writers, is widely thought of as the resident Mr. Rom-com. Despite, y’know, having made a grand total of 3 rom-com movies (as well as writing a few others), including his most recent About Time. It’s testament to his ability for saccharine romance and the fantastically foppish that his few contributions to the engorged genre of soppy pop – including Notting Hill and Love Actually – not only contribute to it, but veritably typify it.
About Time is a no holds barred, straight-faced, follow-up to the tradition that Curtis has made, cultivated and mastered.
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| The anual 'father-son-hold-your-breath-in-the-fart-cupboard' competition was well underway. |
About Time does little differently and instead focuses on doing what it does very very well. All of the rom-com conventions you love to hate are present and accounted for: kooky family, grouchy grandparents, wacky weddings, musical cues and enough plucky montages to serenade you jovially off to the end of time itself. And while such an adherence to the rules is sugary suicide for the average hot pink, happy-go-lucky, dowdy-girl-meets-mysterious-boy-in-a-place production, About Time approaches the fawning beast with the confidence, skill and heart to get away with it.
What it does do differently however, very differently indeed, is throw in its sci-fi garnish: time travel.
Though About Time sometimes seems to forget that it is, in fact, about time (travel), its creative flair with its central gimmick is certainly commendable, utilised for frequent laughs and several emotionally charged jabs. Orchestrating the perfect first night and proposal and best-man speech; setting up clandestine meetings with his father; fixing a housemate’s nightmarish play performance: Tim is nothing if not charmingly self-serving with his majestically unexplained superpower. Rom-coms are frequent targets for criticism on the basis that everything is a tad too much ‘happily-ever-after’ but with its time-travel ace up its sleeve, About Time offers a weirdly amusing ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at just how everything may line up so perfectly.
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| Pictured: All of the Britain, pale men failing at sport. |
Casting wise, About Time largely knocks it out of the park, to use a totally unrelated metaphor. Bill Nighy plays a fantastic Bill Nighy, all shambling charm and muted scholarly academia, while Duncan and Wilson abide professionally to their respective familial conventions as the mother and sister. Though initially a bit wooden and every inch the lesser Hugh Grant to begin with, Domhall Gleeson eventually makes it work, growing into the central role like some bumbling everyman by way of Dr. Who rejects.
In a somewhat ironic twist, the weakest string to About Time’s cupid’s bow is its central love-story. McAdams is appropriately adorable as the loser-type Mary (though she’s surely played this exact same character enough times by now! Maybe she’ll get to time-travel next time) but her presence is weirdly weightless. So far as the plot goes, she has as much agency as the chair you’re sat on (an awkward side-effect where time-travel can explain and control pretty much everything) and her and Tim’s relationship goes remarkably smoothly. Whereas with most films where time-travel is its guiding force something enormous and world destroying invariably goes wrong, here it’s a pleasantly smooth ride, with only one hiccup far too easily swept away. Every time the film threatens to ratchet up the emotional stakes…it almost cowardly takes a step back.
But maybe that’s the point. The key relationship here is between Tim and his father rather than Tim and Mary and while that may seem ostensibly peculiar come actively idiotic…it actually works perfectly. About Time works because it marries straight-laced convention with something just a little bit different and seeing Tim and Mary’s relationship blossom through the perspective of father and son time-traveling team just, for whatever reason, works.
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| Well that fringe is certainly About Time. About time it was cut! Can I get a 'hell yeah'? |
Verdict
Perfect for starry-eyed schmoozers and the average cinemagoer alike, About Timeis chock full of fabulously entertaining characters (Bill Nighy, ye be a god) and romantic beats. A perfectly pitched summer rom-com with enough of a difference to avoid the gloopy pitfalls of stereotype.
4/5
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