"About Time" Movie Review

            Now that we had romance movies with vampires from 2008-2012, a romance movie with witches in February of this year, a romance movie with zombies also in February of this year, a romance movie with aliens in March of this year, and a mix of all of these movies in August of this year, we now must have a romance movie with time travel in November.

            About Time is a new rom-com dramedy from writer and director Richard Curtis about a young weak man who learns that he has the ability of time travel and the tale of this life and how he uses it to help him, but also the people around him, and how he deals with it throughout his life while making many mistakes using it.

 

            This film stars Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams, who both do very well in their roles. It is also has a supporting cast of Bill Nighy, Lydia Wilson, and Lindsay Duncan. All three of them did well, but they were not phenomenal. All of those supporting parts could have been played by anyone. I really do think the primary actors owned their roles. The acting was still good.

            The screenplay, by Richard Curtis, attempted at many things. It tried to be very funny, enjoyable, have good dialogue, be clever, and have heart. It accomplished all of those things. It was a funny movie. It only really had one gut-buster, but I laughed at most of the jokes. Some laughs were just chuckles, but some of them I actually legitimately laughed at. Also, surprisingly, most of the laughs were not cheesy. Some of the ones I actually laughed at were cheesy, and there were cheesy lines that I did not laugh at. There were also jokes that went too far or ones that were too repetitive that eventually made fools out of themselves. It was enjoyable, but I will get more into that later. What I mean by it had good dialogue is that there were times when someone would say something that I thought was realistic, or someone would do something that I thought was realistic. For most of the movie it did seem like this was written in a script, but almost all movies are like that so that cannot really be a negative. It did have unrealistic parts, but I let some of them slide because this genre has claimed what it is through all of these movies. The way it was clever is that the formula for time traveling and the limitations there are to time traveling really added depth, and surprisingly, realism to the movie and was one way that it was clever. Another way is that after a while it actually did not explain everything to the audience. There are some things that they give hints at and the audience has to figure out for themselves. It is very rare that movies do that, and it was pulled off very well. That is another way that the movie is clever. It succeeded at having heart because you actually like the lead characters in this movie, so you care about them. Sometimes when it tried to get to audience it did fail, but those were only a few times. Sadly, I also have another negative for the writing. In the way that the story is told, it does not pace itself incredibly well. For the most of the film it stays on a constant story line, but at one point it starts skipping ahead by years. The script was not paced incredibly well, so it was a little messy. But I still say that the screenplay is very, very good.

            I will reserve a paragraph for the directing here. The directing is also done by writer of the movie, Richard Curtis. I do not really think he should have directed this. I think that he is a better writer and director. I think by the time production had started of the film he wanted to change his vision. I think a different director would have taken the screenplay and captured the vision of the screenplay, if it was a good director. I will say that the film did not look bad. Sometimes it did have some pretty bad green screen, though. For the most part, the shots were not bad. But there was one scene in which people had a conversation that would have been intense if it was handled nearly any other way, because it switched between them so dramatically that it immediately became laughable. The shots were both shots of their heads really close up. The way it was executed was not very god. It seemed like a 10-year-old shot that scene. There was also one scene where the camera guy was walking backwards while someone was walking down the sidewalk, but the camera was shaking really bad. Overall the directing was alright.

            The story of the movie, yet similar to recent movies, was actually fairly original. It was well thought-out and executed. Even though some elements did not fit in quite right, it all worked together. It was interesting and it was handled well. That is why the story of this film was really good. The events in this film, while mostly unpredictable, never had true “WOW!” moments. They did conjure some much unexpected twists, but nothing big. The events were very good overall.

            This movie has to be enjoyable for everything to work. And I will say that I did enjoy this movie. Though, the execution of the film also had pacing issues along with the script. Because for the first hour or so, it paced itself well. But after the first two acts of the film ended, it started to go up and down and up and down. It kept on repeating its pattern, so the “up” moments were not as enjoyable and they should have been, and the “down” moments got boring. So this movie did have several dull moments. Another issue with the film is that it seemed to have four or five acts. It changed its direction many times to the point where it seemed messy. And, the film itself is a big messy. It is a bit all over the place. Still, though, with these few twists it is enjoyable. The story itself is interesting, and the main character himself is interesting. His life is interesting. That is why the film is enjoyable. It is not quite very enjoyable. It is very close to being really enjoyable, though.

            About Time has good acting, very, very good writing, a really good story, very good events, was enjoyable, and had alright directing, but it did have some bad lines and some unrealistic lines, several faults with the directing, and had pacing issues and seemed messy. This movie is overall a really good movie.

            I rate the movie on my rating system “A good movie”. Because of the pacing issues, it is not quite worth seeing at the theater, but it is a really good rental.
            On the grading rating system, I give it a B+. It barely got over a B.
            On the out-of-10 rating system, I give About Time a 7.6/10.