ROMANTIC DRAMA; 1hr 47min
STARRING: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana
Soaking it up: McAdams and Bana
It’s a stretch to process this tenses-spinning fantasy from director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) in which Mr Likability Bana plays show-and-tell with his manly physique as Chicago librarian Henry. Afflicted with a freakish malady, Henry journeys randomly through time, arriving starkers wherever he lands. (Lord only knows how he keeps his job.) His story begins at age six, when he dematerialises from a car accident that kills his mother. The ongoing dislocation from the narrative of his life isn’t entirely a burden: as a man, Henry revisits his younger mum, along with the little girl (Brooklynn Proulx) who becomes his pretty, patient wife Clare (McAdams). But like everyone else, he can never escape himself.
I loved the transcendently romantic concept when novelist Audrey Niffenegger came up with it in 2003, and I stayed with it for the most part as a movie. I could have used some time travel to whip through the flatter later scenes but as the screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost ) settles into an illogically logical rhythm, its central, persuasive truth is the primary importance of living in the moment.
