|
About Time
| Released |
6 September 2013 |
| Director |
Richard Curtis |
Starring
|
Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Richard Cordery, Joshua McGuire, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie, Will Merrick, Vanessa Kirby |
| Writer(s) |
Richard Curtis |
| Producer(s) |
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner |
| Origin |
United Kingdom |
| Running Time |
123 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy, drama, sci-fi |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
The time traveler’s life.
Richard Curtis’s latest film may be about time travel but is still very much a Richard Curtis film. There won’t be any plotting to kill Hitler or worrying about things like paradoxes; in Curtis’s hands, time travel is ideal for helping out chums, chatting up girls and getting the chance to finish reading Bleak House.
On his twenty-first birthday, perennial nice-guy Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns a secret from his father (Bill Nighy) - the men of his family have the ability to travel back in time. Though initially sceptical, Tim soon sets about using his newly found power to try to find himself a girlfriend. Soon he hits it off with Rachel McAdams’ Mary and the film follows their life together as Tim tries and often fails to make life perfect for everyone around him.
Despite the off-beat premise, About Time isn’t a stylistic departure for Curtis. It’s a film populated by English eccentrics, punctuated by pop music and which is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to tugging the heart strings. True to form, Curtis has written a script with plenty of laugh out loud moments but which also confirms his tendency to meander. The film comes in at just over two hours and could comfortably have lost a chunk of a mid-section that sags under the weight of pointless detours and dead-ends. There are several scenes thrown into the mix that are sweetly amusing but add nothing to either the narrative or to character development.
Luckily, the easy chemistry between Gleeson and McAdams keep us rooting for Tim and Mary throughout. They are both charming and Gleeson in particular captures the essential goofy charisma of a Curtis leading man without being gratingly awkward. It also has a cracking performance by Bill Nighy as Bill Nighy - worth the admission price alone. So, while it’s not a classic of the genre, About Time is sweet and funny and has a relentless positivity that will thaw even the most cynical viewer. Whether or not it will stand the test of time is less certain.
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Linda O’Brien |
