An anodyne romcom devoid of temporal paradox

Rating: 2/10 (10 October 2013)

There are many contradictions and plot flaws with this film, but it would be possible to overlook these if we had even been presented with a remotely satisfying piece of cinema. At its start, the premise seems promising - a young man has the gift of travelling through time and undoing those awkward moments. Early scenes in the film are actually quite engaging and amusing and Bill Nighy lights up the screen. The problem here is that the time travel conceit sets up an expectation of a complex plot involving tortuous temporal paradoxes and moral dilemmas, but the film does none of this. The car accident scenario is the nearest the plot gets to the difficulty of rewriting history. Beyond this, the story descends into a an irritating tableau of how lovely posh people live lovely lives in lovely St John's Wood houses. Once they escape from that horrid bedsit, the lead characters wed, make babies and live in impossibly expensive houses. The tornado at the Cornwall wedding raised the tantalising possibility of the bride being hit by a falling tree, setting Domhnall Gleeson's character on a time-travel quest to prevent her death. But no. Instead the film-makers choose to rub our noses in their dreary middle-class bliss. It's all so nice, so twee, and so disassociated from time-travel. Possibly this is Curtis's blandest work to date. If you want to see a good, tense film about time-travel, go see Butterfly Effect. The only tension you get in this anodyne romcom is Rachel McAdams trying to decide which dress to put on for a dinner party (it seems to take her about 20 minutes). I only wish I had the gift of time-travel so that I could travel back to persuade myself not to buy tickets for this film in the first place.