Amusing... for about 30-45min, and then B-O-R-I-N-G

Rating: 3/10 (24 November 2013)

This is the story of nice little - if unoriginal - idea. One that could be the basis of a nice little short movie. Or even a brilliant masterpiece of a short movie. But 2 hours :gasp: :yuk: please! About Time is lovely written, of course, every scene is charming, subtle and funny and just spot on, and the cast is just wonderful. But the whole story is a chore. Once Tim gets the love of his life, what do we care? Everything else looks tediously uninteresting, there is nothing left to fight for and the philosophical lesson, the Great Secret of Happiness is very long in the telling so you just want to get it over with.
In French we say that "Happy people are not worth a story" and that's exactly the point here: you just wish you won't have watch years and years in the life of a happy man who can go back in time and tweak every little detail he got wrong the first time, and with not real major downside. I guess this pretty soon gets boring to him as it got boring for Bill Murray in the Groundhog Day before he understand that love would be the meaning of life.
In About Time our 'hero' Tim is just a nice little boy, very clean, adorable and sweet upbringing (sure it is not a Ken Loach movie but soft and gentle Soap Opera, must we?): one plain boring nerd with a plain boring perfect cute love story he patches together. Groundhog Day was about a curse, not a fancy gift, and Bill Murray was an edgy and fascinating character indeed. Same starting point: great movie here, insufferable drivel there.