The Time Traveler's Wife
2022
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- PG-132009 · Romance · 1h 47m
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May 12, 2022 · Macall Polay/HBO. By Mike Hale. May 12, 2022. History is the thing that happens twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. Now there’s another thing: “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”. The...
May 16, 2022 · The Time Traveler’s Wife review – far too much ick factor to be truly great. Steven Moffat’s adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 bestseller is witty and well done, but it can’t...
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- Verdict
By Matt Fowler
Updated: May 14, 2022 3:56 pm
Posted: May 13, 2022 5:48 pm
The Time Traveler's Wife premieres Friday, May 13 on HBO Max. This is a non-spoiler review for all six episodes.
The second book-to-screen adaptation of 2003 best-seller The Time Traveler's Wife comes to us as a series from Doctor Who and Sherlock's Steven Moffat. This naturally means the dialogue's quickly paced and a bit winking, and an ample amount of charm will find its way in, even when it doesn't quite fit. What can't inherently change, though, is the story itself, which for 20 years has been equal parts romantic and icky. The Time Traveler's Wife does ultimately work as a series, though accent and makeup choices, as well as a Christopher Nolan-type tendency to go over the "rules" ad nauseam, make for a bumpy ride -- kind of like poor Henry DeTamble's naked, collision-filled time-hopping itself.
The book's story is set in America, though considering Moffat and the two U.K.-born leads -- Theo James (the Divergent series) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) -- it didn't have to be. There's nothing about the tale that requires it to be set in a specific country. But instead, we get James and Leslie using American accents, which aren't awful per se, but also don't sound natural. In the end, any obstacle to these two being able to use as much of their charisma as possible -- whether it's wonky wigs or accents or making Henry look, like, 48 when he's 32 -- is a detriment because you have to be be able to sell the shit out of this insane romance in order to smooth out as much of the awkwardness as possible. To their credit, James and Leslie do their best here in a somewhat overbearing story about two people whom time/fate has decided must meet, marry, and breed.
There are moments of drama that work well and moments of mirth that are cute, but nothing can really stop this out-of-sync courtship from feeling aggressively bonkers, sometimes in problematic ways. A few lines here and there pay lip service to the fact that this is a cosmic grooming situation -- that also plays into the antiquated idea of little girls having a "dream husband" out there, in the ether, who will just one day slide into the groom position at a large wedding -- but it's never deeply explored. Leslie's Clare Abshire even says that because she met Henry when she was 6 and grew up into womanhood having 150 or so platonic dates with him as he popped back though time into forest behind her family's estate, she's formed her entire sexual identity around this man who continuously naked-cannonballs into her life.
Moffat did figure out, with mostly success, how to turn this fable into six episodes, but the longer you spend in this world the more absurd it becomes. It never normalizes. That being said, it's the first two episodes that are the clunkiest to get through. Time travel, and all the twists and turns it can bring, is way more of a pop culture conversation now than it was even two decades ago, so Episodes 1 and 2 are filled with an excessive amount of exposition and reveals that are easy to spot ahead of time. Bottom line: Henry is somehow a man who, through no intention of his own and with no easily discernible trigger other than stress, instantly moves back in time (mostly within his own lifetime). He leaves his clothes behind and arrives places in the nude, always crash-landing on hard surfaces or angry people. The most interesting aspect here is that this type of time travel is not fun. In fact, it's dangerous and emotionally damaging. His life is in jeopardy every time he goes back, and on top of that he's often forced to revisit past personal calamities with no way of preventing them.
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The first truly interesting part of the story involves Clare meeting Henry for the first time in a non-time-travel capacity -- their first official adult introduction -- and she knows everything and he knows nothing, because he's only met her younger self as his older self. He's 28 and a broken mess because of the toll his temporal hiccups have taken. Over these six episodes, the story weaves a fun web of these two running into each other at different stages of age and knowledge, taking turns at being privy to information and events because a different version of themselves either was told about it or already experienced it. It's interesting and intricate and at times it's enough to distract you from some of the more melodramatic moments that land with a thud.
The two leads of The Time Traveler's Wife do their best to make complex moments of humanity crack through the wild hook -- which involves a troublesome premise and a lot of naked Theo James falling into things -- and Steven Moffat's deeper dive into the story via TV series offers up some moments, both funny and dramatic, that work. Overall, though,...
May 14, 2022 · TV Reviews. HBO’s ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’: TV Review. Rose Leslie and Theo James play a couple whose romance is challenged by his uncontrollable tendency to travel through time in...
- Angie Han
May 15, 2022 · The Time Traveler's Wife is a romance that hasn't aged well. This is weird! Credit: Macall Polay / HBO. I really enjoy Niffenegger's novel, but even in written form, the age gap between...
- belen.edwards@mashable.com
- Entertainment Reporter
May 11, 2022 · Reviews. May 11, 2022 9:00am PT. ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Is a Story About a Repetitive Life, Told Repetitively: TV Review. By Daniel D'Addario. Courtesy of HBO/Macall Polay. When...
May 15, 2022 · Overall The Time Travelers Wife is funny and poignant in its best moments, but uncomfortable and cringe-worthy at its worst. Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2022. Phylecia Miller...
