About Time
About Time is one of the all time great romantic dramadies. A simple tale of time travel, love, and life, About Time is a low key/high concept gem that never fails to make me feel all those feelings that I desperately try to push down on the daily.
Spoilers for About Time to follow.
Director Richard Curtis almost immediately gets to the fact that Tim, charmingly played by Domhnall Gleeson, can travel back in time to other moments in his life. He learns from his father, played by the great Bill Nighy, that all the men in their family are capable of this. Given that this is the creator of Love Actually, Tim is instructed to only use this gift for friends, family and love.
Alright, look, I really do adore Love Actually, I do. But that film feels more like fantasy than About Time ever could, and that’s why I have to give this flick the edge over that Christmas staple. Writer/director Curtis keeps the film focused and grounded (for a time travel movie), and his cast does A LOT of heavy lifting in creating relatable and likable characters. Rachel McAdams is a goddamned National Treasure at this point and here she is so charming, gorgeous, short tempered (which is adorable), and flat out real that of course you fall in love with her again. Gleeson is her equal in every way, and their journey through life together is the heart of the whole thing.
About Time is so unabashedly sweet, so determined to get you to see the joy in day to day life that it actually kills the cynic in me (which is near impossible). It also doesn’t shy away from the real deal horrors and tragedies of everyday life, but only as a way to remind you of the good things. Shit, the whole movie is just a gentle reminder to live your best life, enjoy what you have and hold the ones you love as close as you can and as long as you can. I don’t always fall for such sincerity, but About Time got me good.
But what really gets me about this movie is that just when you think it has revealed all its cards, the movie pulls the rug out from under you and decides to become a love letter to men and their fathers and that’s where I just lose it every time. It’s a sucker punch of an ending in the best way and I dare even the biggest of cynics to watch this movie and not at the very least get a lump in your throat.
So why did I buy About Time? Because it is one of my favorite romantic films, up there with The Notebook (McAdams 4 Lyfe!) as movies that can melt the ice away from my heart for about 2 hours at a time.