About Time

Ratings: 6.0/10

Film class: B 

Genre: Sci-Fi Drama

On his 21st birthday, Tim's dad broke the news to him that the guys in his family line has the ability to travel through time. All they have to do is simply to find a dark corner, clench their fist, close their eyes and think back to a point in their life that they want to go back to... Easy peasy. They can't travel to the future, and are able to only travel to a point in their lives. They will then take over themselves at that point in time, and relive that moment all over again, with little impact on the future.

While the time travelling concept is nothing new, the effort needed to actually do it was too incredibly easy, however also causing the credibilty to suffer. Major repercussions such as the butterfly effect were conveniently brushed aside with a simple explanatory matter-of-fact line. *major spoilers ahead* The underlying morality of Tim's ability was also not addressed, shifting the focus to his child-like actions - all he used his ability for was to get a girl to like him and "procrastinate" the death of his father.

If you really think about it, it wasn't a romantic comedy like how most people would expect it to be. Tim's relationship to gorgeous Rachel Adams (the word "gorgeous" was intentionally inserted, rather out-of-place, to justify the higher ratings I gave this movie) was based on deception - using his time travelling ability to perfect conversations, build stronger emotional and physical connections. 

He basically abused his ability to make himself look good... altering his bestman until it reached his ideal outcome... messing around with his sister's boyfriends hoping to make life better for himself so that he doesn't lose his sister, and spending "extra" time with his dad all by himself because he couldn't let go.

It might come across as light-hearted and heart warming to some, but deep down I felt cheated. It was like witnessing a crime and there was nothing I could do about it. At the very least, I had hoped for "aw" romance, but the closest "aw" I got was "aw-ful".