MYST #4: About Time

I had been interested in seeing About Time since it came out almost exactly a year ago, but I never got to see it. I remembered the trailers from then, so when I saw the movie on t.v. recently I decided it was finally meant to be that I would see this movie.

One of the main character, Rachel McAdams, has been in a lot of good romantic movies like The Vow and The Notebook (not to mention Mean Girls). Being that she was the only American actor in the film, I did not know the other actors by name-or even face-most of the time. It turns out that Domhnall Gleeson, who plays opposite McAdams, was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and 2 as Bill Weasley. The fact that he is going to be in Star Wars: Episode VII (According to IMDb) would have sold this movie to me so more, but Rachel McAdams and the story of the film was enough to pull me in before I found that out.

Tim and Mary meeting for the first time, which they will
do two more times,

About Time follows Tim (Gleeson) through his life, basically starting from when his dad (Bill Nighy) tells him that the men in their family have a special gift: the ability to travel back in time through their own lives. Where the movie could have taken a weird sic-fi turn (or turned into another version of McAdam's film Time Traveler's Wife), it instead gave the awkward character of Tim several second chances. It initially does not help him as much as he hoped, but Tim eventually gets the hang of his gift and meets Mary (McAdams) in the process. Time traveling is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to a perfect life, but Tim eventually finds out that some things do not need to be re-done to be perfect. While Tim and Mary build a life together, we also see Tim having to decide whether to time travel again in order to prevent things, like his sister (Lydia Wilson) getting into a bad car crash. The story becomes more than about love between a man and a woman as Tim also looses his dad and cannot go back in time to visit him, but Tim learns to live each day as great as he can, so that he does not even have to think about redoing it.

Tim and his father about to time travel together
for the last time.

There were a couples scenes in the film that did a good job of utilizing a hand held camera or different lighting to match the mood, but what really stood out was the editing of the film. The whole time traveling thing could have been made to be completely cheesy, and having to stand in a dark closet and clench your fist almost made it, but the way the filmmakers kind of rewind the scenes that Tim was traveling through helped make the experiences easier to follow and almost more realistic.

Tim's experience with time travel, although sadly unrealistic, ended up being relatable in the end as he explains that we should take advantage of all of our time with people and make the most of everyday. The movie managed to be funny, romantic, sad, well cast, and just well-made. The only faults remain in what I also mentioned to be good. The time traveling aspect got to be a bit confusing is the logistics of what Tim could and could not do, to me anyway, so for that I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.