The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) is about a man who slips through time involuntarily because of a genetic disorder. Henry cannot choose where or when he goes; he vanishes and appears naked in another year. Clare meets him as a child, because he arrives to her from later. The source is Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 novel. The book is told in two voices with sections labelled by the characters' ages; the film flattens that structure into a straightforward love story. Eric Bana plays Henry and Rachel McAdams plays Clare. Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the screenplay, having written Ghost, and the two films share territory. Robert Schwentke directed. The novel was adapted again as a television series in 2022. It runs 107 minutes. Good for: romantic drama, time travel used emotionally rather than mechanically, and McAdams. Less good for: the most troubling thing in the book, that Clare is being prepared for a relationship from childhood, passes without question here. The rules of the time travel are inconsistent and get bent whenever an emotional effect is wanted.