FILM ONLY: Time Travelers Wife: "I would not change anything about our lives together" (The Time Traveler's Wife (DVD))

Member Name: stephbond89

Product:	The Time Traveler's Wife (DVD)
Date:	23/08/09 (50 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A fantastic storyline, great acting. Fabulous Characters who suit their roles perfectly.

Disadvantages: Not true to the book in some aspects.

The Time Travellers' Wife

Directed by: Robert Schewentke
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana
Release Date: 14/08/2009 UK
Film Classification: 12A
Genre: Romance, Drama, Sci-Fi
Runtime: 107 minutes

The Time Travellers' Wife is a film about a couple, Henry and Clare DeTamble. They met when Henry was 38 and Clare was 6, but this isn't a love story of a huge age difference. In fact there are only 8 years age gap between Henry and Clare.

Henry DeTamble is a time traveller.

He has been since he was a young child. He can't control it, he can't control where he goes, or when he goes back to but he always seems to go back to places which have great importance to him: his mothers death when he was 7 is one place which he travels to alot, reliving it over and over. But when he is grown up, and happily married to Clare, he goes back in time to her when she was a child.

Henry finds himself naked in the meadow at the back of Clare Abshires house Meadowlark, and when he meets a beautiful little girl, he knows straight away who it is, from then on, he visits her in the past throughout her adolescence stopping when she is 18, only to meet again in the present two years later when she is 20, and he is 28. And this is the beginning of their beautiful, yet confusing and stressful relationship.

The film goes back in time a lot, and also at some points jumps forward in time, but it is kept together by the present which takes up most of the film. We see the struggle Clare goes through as a wife of a time traveller. Not knowing where or when her husband is. Is he with her in the meadow as a child, or is he been chased by the police running through Chicago in 1993 wearing nothing but a stolen pair of shorts. Not knowing when he will be home, or even if he will be coming home.

The film courses a period of around 20 years, from when Henry and Clare meet in the Present, right up until Clare is 36 and Henry is 43. Going through the normal heartache of real marriages and real problems, trying to conceive, house hunting, families, friends. With the added pressure of Henry disappearing every few days. The story is a fabulous one, it's creative in that it has never been done before, it's a real love story with a huge twist.

My Opinion:

I have read the book The Time Travellers' Wife (see review) which I absolutely adored, I couldn't put it down, so much so that it was carried in my handbag everywhere I went until I had finished it. I went to watch this film last week at the cinema, when I had only just finished the book. This is never a good idea with any film as of course many things need to change when a book is adapted to a film, one for budgeting needs, also a little poetic license, some smaller storylines are cut out so as to make the film shorter, and also not confusing (if your trying to fit 5 storylines into a 107 minute film it's going to get very messy.) But these little differences in storyline do stick out to you, and it ruins the film. So first of all, if you haven't read the book yet, and want to watch the film, then watch the fil first. If you have just read the book, wait until the film is out on DVD and watch it then. The film is amazing, and if I hadn't just finished reading Aurdrey Niffeneger's novel of the same title, I think I would have enjoyed it 100% more.

Some slight things annoyed me in the film which change (of course many of these I cannot say anything about without giving away the plot), one of which was Clare's hair, in the book, she says that she wants to chop off her hair, and have it cut short, but that Henry would be devastated as she has such beautiful auburn hair flowing down her back, and so she doesn't cut off her hair, and it references back to this long hair in the last chapter of the book. But, in the film, when Clare is only around 25, her hair has been lopped off from the gorgeous long hair, to a bob. I know it is only something very small, but it is something which does pop out in your head, and it was something which didn't need to be changed. There are many more small things which differ from the book, characters missing who are a big part of the books story. The ending is a little different too, not so much that it changes the whole story (like the DaVinci Code did) but still different.

I am giving this film 4 stars, it would have gained more had it not been for me reading the book before hand, but the slight changes made the film less enjoyable than the book had been for me. I was so excited about watching the film after reading the amazing story, and I was disappointed.

On saying that, I am most certainly not saying that this was a bad film, not by a long shot. The characters were perfect in their roles, and matched the characters from the book perfectly, Eric Bana as Henry was top notch, he was exactly what I imagined when reading the book and he was perfect in the role,
with just the right amount of humour to add a light touch to the film. Rachel McAdams was also perfect in her role of Clare, and again, she was exactly as I imagined her to be in the book. The characters definitely grow on you throughout the film, and you really begin to feel for them.

If your going to watch this film in the cinema, I would recommend taking a tissue! It has a very sad ending, which will have you in tears, the whole screen when I went to watch this were sniffling away at it.

I will be buying the DVD when it comes out, mainly as I would like to watch the film again a few months after reading the book, maybe when I have watched it again I will be able to come back here and add that extra star. I would love to be able to as the film has the potential to be a 5 star film, and I think reading
the book before I watched the film was a very big mistake, one which I hope you don't make too!

All in all, if you like a good love story, this film is definitely for you. I don't know why I think this, but it reminded me of Armageddon, of course without the space ships and huge drills, but it was that kind of epic storyline which you know will be around for years to come. A must see in my books.

Summary: A fantastic film which would be loved much more if it was truer to the book!