Not funny or smart enough to justify the sheer amount of sentiment it pours on

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2014)

When he turns 21, young Tim has "the talk" with his father – although in the case of his family, the father/son talk is actually to reveal that all the men in the family can travel in time, back to any moment in their own life. Told of the downsides of just chasing money or just never working, Tim continues his life but determined to make the most of his talent to try and make sure he has true love. It doesn't work out great at first but a chance meeting with Mary starts a journey of a lifetime.
There is a message at the end of this film that is essentially about living life as it comes and enjoying it for what it is – not necessarily everyone quitting to go and travel for the rest of their life (someone needs to work) but just enjoying the ride whatever that ride is. It is a commendable message but the irony of it is that it is being delivered to someone who has just not done that for the previous 2 hours. Of course going into the film I knew that this is a Richard Curtis rom-com, filled with the usual faces and of course doing the usual things, so there is an element of buyer beware, but I was curious about the time-travel angle.
Truth is that, outside of some plot points and basically the same jokes done over and over again, it really doesn't add much to what is essentially a film so sugary it will give you diabetes. The shame of it is that it does have nice ideas and themes in here but it never misses a chance to overdo it. So the soundtrack is full of easy Coldplay-esque rubbish, the narrator explains it all slowly so that the film doesn't need to be work, the relationships are all soft and cuddly, the characters are all totally fantasy people who only exist in Curtis' films and generally the whole thing is overdone and hugely sentimental. I would lie if I said that it didn't still work as such, but it really was hard work to stay close to it considering how much it pushed me away.
The cast match the tone of the film and I found Gleeson and McAdams to be overly cutesy and cuddly – not a rough edge on either of their characters or their performances. Nighy at least adds a bit of clout to the mostly empty emotion, while Hollander, Grant, Griffiths and a few others at least add a bit of grit or cleverness into the film. Mostly though the whole thing is so safe and smoothed that almost no character remains in it. Of course it is not awful – it is too professionally crafted for that, but what it is just didn't work for me. About Time taught me a lesson about time – that it shouldn't be used for films that I don't fancy much but might watch just because someone said it is "alright".