Travel in time: spend the happiest 123 minutes of your life

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2013)

The spoiler is at the front of this review: If you think this is a film about time travel, then please don't go and see this film. Just take a copy of 'Star Trek' or something and lock yourself in a closet (hint).
However... if you can come out of the closet a reformed character if you have any kind of soul or a heart. You simply HAVE to see this movie. Again, I have to thank my darling wife (as per my last review) as I thought I would never have wanted to see this film... though I saw the trailer and was a little intrigued.
The trailer actually though doesn't give you even a tenth of this movie's depth or emotional content and if you want to have a good cry at any point then do so... but I defy you not to shed a tear at the end. I'm writing this review whilst listening to Mark Kermode's parallel take on the film via YouTube and cannot help but concur - and he cried too - for all the right reasons this film works and on lots and lots of levels.
Firstly though - is it a chick film or is it in that cadre alongside 'Field of Dreams' where actually its a male tale? I think definitely the latter but either sex will be certain to claim it as one of their own and the parallels are already starting to appear on the internet. It may not have yet the cult status of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' but frighteningly that film was made almost twenty years ago and the world has moved on. I think 'About Time' is every bit as good, if not better, than 'Four Weddings' and I think (and hope) over time people will stop making that comparison and respect it for being something quite different and arguably more subtle, indeed a little darker.
Secondly, the current comparator on the Wiki page is 'Groundhog Day'. Yes, there are similar themes and tropes in 'About Time' but you will warm to the lead characters in 'About Time' far more than you will ever do to Bill Murray and his amusing but acerbic humour. So I don't think that this is anything like 'Groundhog' (or '50 First Dates', which is 'Groundhog Day' but sweeter in my view) in that sense and plays... dare I say... much better and a fair bit deeper.
Third, some critics say the film is more like 'The Time Traveller's Wife'. I caught that for the first time only last week and was less-than-impressed... the story was good but the film itself just left you feeling like an observer on the outside of a physics experiment. For me, 'About Time' is very different and a far better movie.
The difference: you cannot help but to be drawn into the world that surrounds these characters as its real. ever day stuff - late teen angst; first (and second) loves; marriage, romance, children and sadly also death. It doesn't get much more 'real' than that.
Now apparently this film has opened in the UK first and doesn't hit the US until the start of November. The size of the 'real' box office take will only be known once its passed through the US and this is a quintessentially British film after all. It has Bill Nighy (again as suggested by Mark Kermode) playing a character playing a character playing Bill Nighy, through Lindsay Duncan and what seems to be a cast of really great up-and-coming British actors and actresses (Rachel MacAdams excepted). So whether they will 'get' it over the pond remains to be seen...
...but that doesn't mean its not a wonderful film and if you only get to see one more film this year, make it this one.
I saw 'Four Weddings' with a (then) girlfriend and walked out from the cinema knowing that we didn't have the romance that was needed to make it all the way. Its taken me twenty years, as I said, but I came out tonight having watched the film with someone who makes me feel like the final words of the film suggest and also that the title, 'About Time' can be taken in many, many ways...
...maybe it was about time Richard Curtis did something better than 'Four Weddings' and for me, this is it. Please see it and make it the hit it deserves to be.