Genre: Romance/Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
SPOILER WARNING
The Magic of Love, Don’t Reveal Your Secrets
About Time is hands down my favorite romance film. I’m not really big on romantic films, but I genuinely love this film. It’s not perfect, but to me, its imperfections kind of make it more perfect. Kind of like a person you love. This story is about a young man, Tim, who can travel back in time at will and uses this ability to craft his romance with the love of his life, Mary. It’s not a perfect love story, they have their missteps, but every time Tim has to relive a part of his relationship, he learns something new and gets farther. Almost like Groundhog Day but you can pick when to repeat the day.
To an extent, you’d think, well this guy is cheating the system. He’s getting away with mistakes, taking advantage of Mary because she doesn’t know that he may or may not have done this before. Maybe every person reading this is a little jealous that they can’t go back in time and not say something they said to their significant other, undo a mistake, etc. That’s something I like about this film. Instead of taking a super power to cheat the system, he uses it to improve himself as a person. Tim could easily wait to find out how to win some lottery, go back in time and win it, in doing that become super, super rich. That’s not what this movie is about, it’s not about the super power. It’s about the love and the characters.
Tim and Mary have really strong chemistry and such a fun love story. You’re always rooting for them to succeed and although we know Tim can go back in time and redo anything, the stakes are still there. How many times can Tim actually relive this and that? Eventually he stops using his ability and lives his life normally. This story is focused on the love of these characters and uses this time travel ability as a device to be unique. It’s really clever and I personally love that.
One thing that I learned from this film is that, not every single question a movie poses, especially supernatural, has to be answered. This film benefits from not have a 20 minute period of the movie going over the origin of this super power and how it works, and why, and this, and that…or any of that. It’s unnecessary. In film school oftentimes when writing a script, the question is, okay but why? How? What for? Which by itself is perfectly natural. Take About Time as an example. The story is about love, time travel is a device, so focus on the love. Sacrificing screen time to the science of its device would ruin it. That’s a big lesson for me as a young screenwriter. I really need to focus on what my story is about and what devices/tools I use to tell the story need an explanation in order to work because that’s not always the case.
Overall, this film is very well written, the acting is fantastic and it’s not too bad to look at either. The cinematography isn’t anything special but it’s not bad either. I love this film. It’s probably one of the only Romantic films that I can just watch and watch. So will I watch this again? Maybe once a year with my girlfriend. Should you watch this? Yes! Go watch it, let yourself go and feel the magic of love.
Tony King
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