The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Due to a genetic disorder, handsome librarian Henry DeTamble involuntarily zips through time, appearing at various moments in the life of his true love, the beautiful artist Clare Abshire.
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11 films that influenced The Time Traveler's Wife
What critics say influenced The Time Traveler's Wife
Given that it's a romance with science fiction elements, it makes sense that Rubin was the man for the job, especially since he won an Oscar for writing the 1990 mega-hit Ghost.
Wisely Rubin, who won an Oscar for his Ghost original screenplay, keeps the details of Niffenegger’s story intact but simplifies the premise just enough to make it palatable and coherent for movie audiences.
Maybe the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, which a number of people seem to have read and enjoyed, was more convincing, but the unsatisfactory, yo-yo script by Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote Ghost, makes no real effort to explore the inner emotions of the characters.
And in the hands of director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact), the problem isn’t the timeline—it’s everything else.
Adapted from Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 best-seller, the movie was scripted by Bruce Joel Rubin, who took home a 1990 Academy Award for " Ghost ," another tear-jerking love story featuring a physically absent hubby.
Adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin (who wrote Ghost , which seems fitting) and directed by Robert Schwentke ( Flightplan ), it succinctly establishes the world it takes place in -- a world where time travel is possible -- and then lets us experience, to some extent, the feelings and emotions that would naturally occur in such a world.
If 2008's " The Curious Case of Benjamin Button " was stripped of its depth, lyricism, emotional power and existential complexity, it might end up looking a lot like "The Time Traveler's Wife."
Like Twilight and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it presents a couple struck by sighs but stymied by science.
The story was adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin, who also wrote "Ghost," and the parallels to that film (as well as the recent "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") are easy to spot.
It's worth noting that the script was written by Bruce Joel Rubin (the screenwriter responsible for the similarly themed 1990 film "Ghost"), and that Brad Pitt executive produced the movie whose narrative mechanics are too close to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" for comfort.
Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin explored similar otherworldly scenarios in "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder."
Based upon Audrey Niffenegger's acclaimed bestseller, this 500-page tome has proven too unwieldy for screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, who was more surefooted with Patrick Swayze's Ghost and the brilliant temporal nightmare Jacob's Ladder.
He's aided enormously by Bruce Joel Rubin's screenplay - the author of "Ghost" and "Jacob's Ladder" is a natural for this material - and by a director, Robert Schwentke, who knows when to put the camera on Bana's face and leave it there.
With a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, a veteran scribe with a special expertise in the spiritual and paranormal (see Ghost, see Jacob's Ladder), and directed by the German-gone-Hollywood Robert Schwentke, The Time Traveler's Wife is astounding for the plodding, leaden approach it takes to this wild, woolly idea.
Adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin from Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife offers the screenwriter the sort of metaphysical material—often romantic—at which he has excelled in pictures like Ghost, My Life, and Jacob’s Ladder.
It's clear almost immediately that screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin - best known for penning unapologetically sentimental flicks like 1990's Ghost and 1993's My Life - is primarily interested in exploring the more overtly maudlin elements within the source material, which ensures that the film will probably be received best by those viewers with a high tolerance for syrupy love stories (ie this is more The Notebook than Timecop).
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Don't expect "Wuthering Heights" profundity or passion in "Time"; the film's basically about a couple of attractive yuppies whose lives of happy affluence are disrupted by a genetic disorder that sends Henry packing on his wedding night, at Christmas, when his wife miscarries, even the night of his own demise.
It's difficult to say what may have transpired between Rubin's final draft of The Time Traveler's Wife and the actual beginning of production, but I suspect that as soon as Rachel McAdams was cast, the emphasis went from making another Ghost to making another The Notebook .
It's clear almost immediately that screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin - best known for penning unapologetically sentimental flicks like 1990's Ghost and 1993's My Life - is primarily interested in exploring the more overtly maudlin elements within the source material, which ensures that the film will probably be received best by those viewers with a high tolerance for syrupy love stories (ie this is more The Notebook than Timecop).
With that film’s female lead (Rachel McAdams) in tow, The Time Traveler’s Wife is like The Notebook with a sci-fi twist, and the mostly generic direction by Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) does nothing to dispel my theory.
And Rachel McAdams of "The Notebook" is gently charming -- a helpful attribute when playing such a potentially unsympathetic heroine.
People who complained about The Lake House not fitting together logically missed the fact that it was a story about a magical mailbox.
The 2006 film, The Lake House , postulated that two people separated by years might fall for each other via letters they deposit in a time traveling mailbox.
The same sort of temporal dislocation used in "The Lake House," "Somewhere in Time" and half the episodes of "Star Trek" is wielded more poetically in "The Time Traveler's Wife," from the novel by Audrey Niffenegger.
When they’re not aging backward like Benjamin Button, they’re falling in love from two years away (“The Lake House’’) or from the Great Beyond (“Ghost’’) or from another planet (“Starman’’).
The Time Traveler's Wife, adapted from the 2003 best-seller by Audrey Niffenegger, is one of those gooey romantic mind-benders, like Ghost (which I adored) or The Lake House (not so much), in which a couple must come to grips with some trippy impediment to their relationship, such as life after death or a hole in the space-time continuum.
The same sort of temporal dislocation used in "The Lake House," "Somewhere in Time" and half the episodes of "Star Trek" is wielded more poetically in "The Time Traveler's Wife," from the novel by Audrey Niffenegger.
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It's clear almost immediately that screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin - best known for penning unapologetically sentimental flicks like 1990's Ghost and 1993's My Life - is primarily interested in exploring the more overtly maudlin elements within the source material, which ensures that the film will probably be received best by those viewers with a high tolerance for syrupy love stories (ie this is more The Notebook than Timecop).
Adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin from Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife offers the screenwriter the sort of metaphysical material—often romantic—at which he has excelled in pictures like Ghost, My Life, and Jacob’s Ladder.
Something like Groundhog Day as penned by Henry James, the time-travelling conceit as presented onscreen (it worked better in the book) makes for an awkward hybrid.