Time travel is always a sticky wicket in any narrative be it book or film. With alternate timelines, Grandfather paradoxes and other sorts of adverse side effects, you never know what a trip either backwards or forwards in time will yield; maybe you’ll bring your parents together (Back to the Future) or maybe you’ll become your own grandpa (Futurama). In The Time Traveler’s Wife, time travel is a metaphor for the distance between couples. Sure, Henry DeTamble’s sporadic jumps through the space/tome continuum are literal in keeping with the story, but when you’re destined to be with someone since going back in time and meeting her as a little girl, then I suppose you need a bit of extra drama in your relationship somehow.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is based on the immensely popular novel by Audrey Niffenegger. In fact, it was so popular that the film rights for it were sold long before a single book left the printing press. It’s easy to understand why because in its own way, the story is quite involving and quite romantic, filled with love, life and loss. It’s got serious soap opera potential, which fortunately doesn’t find its way into the script too much, but it’d be a lie to say that those elements aren’t there at all. Normally, that’s the part of a romantic drama that I hate the most, just that thing where every little problem is a world ending dilemma. That’s even when the problem is something a lot less erroneous like constantly looking back and expecting to see your husband and finding only an empty pile of clothes.

The conceit of The Time Traveler’s Wife is interesting though. Henry (played in adult form by Eric Bana) is able to jump back and forth through time, though he’s unable to control it. Every now and then, whether under stress or under the influence or for no good reason at all, he disappears from the present and shows up buck naked in either his past or his future. Let’s say on his wedding day for instance, the “present” Henry vanishes, yet his “older” self suddenly appears instead and takes the vows and then “present” Henry returns in time for the first dance. Or how about going back in time to the day of the car crash that killed your mother and the first time you jumped, and then telling your younger self that it’s all going to be okay? It’s certainly not the way Marty McFly did it, that kind of stuff sees you vanish from the family portrait.

But it would require one heck of an understanding wife. Not only that but imagine this introduction: you’re working your job one day, minding your own business, and this girl walks up to you, totally basking in recognition and starts telling you about how she’s known you since she was a little girl. Rachel McAdams plays Clare, the woman that Henry is destined(?) to marry. I’m not sure if it’s covered in the book, but I would have loved to have seen the script delve into issues of causality in terms of Henry and Clare’s relationship. Did they just end up together because they were “supposed to” or was the hand of destiny truly at work? Sorry gang, I know that those questions in a movie like this constitutes missing the point maybe, but I’ve got to say, me, in that predicament, I would question every square second of it. Maybe.

McAdams is unquestionably charming and radiant, so perhaps, like Henry, you’d just go with it. Bana I’ve seen play too many tough guys and psychos to think that he might pull off the every man romantic lead with any sympathy, but hey, turns out I was wrong. The actors are certainly appealing, which is probably why I think more favourably of this movie than I might have otherwise. By the time the film’s about half over, the story begins to strain under its own weight and its more or less repeating the same encounters over and over again, and by this point the McAdams character is getting whiny about the character trait (flaw?) that brought her and her man together in the first place. As the film barrels towards its inevitable conclusion, it becomes more insipid, and basically ends with that tired old cliché, true love means never having to say goodbye – especially if your love is a time traveler.