(Due to the Oscar-mayhem, I’ve been remiss in writing up reviews for a whole bunch of classic films that I’ve been seeing as “Everyman Throwback” showings over the last couple of months (God bless them). So I will be dripping out these shortened reviews over the next few weeks as I get to them. )
A One Mann’s Movies review of “About Time”. (2013, 4*, 12A).
“About Time” is actually a film with ‘history’ for the One Mann’s Movies website. I started reviewing films here in 2013, when this film was first released, and wrote a review for it. But due to either wayward technology or (more likely) the author’s incompetence, the review vanished without trace from the website never to be seen again! So this is a second chance to view at the cinema and a second chance for me to review!
Whether you enjoy this film or not will probably depend on your view of Richard Curtis’s films in general! “Wretchedly twee”? “Gorgeously warm and sentimental”? Which side of the Curtis fence are you on? I must admit that I’m very pro-Curtis after we mercilessly took the piss out of “Love Actually” at our regular Christmas watch (see this year’s edition on my daughter’s Instagram here) and he sent my daughter a lovely personal video message, via his daughter (1st lobster!), saying how much he’d laughed at it! Top man!
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) turns 21 and is taken aside by his Dad (Bill Nighy) to be told a curious family secret. The male members of his family have a gift: the ability to time travel within their own lifetimes. “A joke?” he thinks…. until he tries it.
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: R. (From the BBFC website: “Contains infrequent strong language and moderate sex references”. This is another of those curious differences where American prudishness about sex causes a film to be suitable for a 12 year old in the UK but rated R in the US!)
Talent:
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy, Lydia Wilson, Lindsay Duncan, Richard Cordery, Joshua McGuire, Tom Hollander, Margot Robbie, Vanessa Kirby, Will Merrick, Tom Hughes.
Directed by: Richard Curtis.
Written by: Richard Curtis.
Running Time: 2h 3m.
Review:
Positives:
- It’s a typical Richard Curtis film, mixing a bit of nostalgic whimsy with some tearjerking moments. If you like Richard Curtis films then you will enjoy this one.
- Who doesn’t love a meet-cute? Here with the clever time-travelling and future-altering narrative we get not one meet-cute (a particularly clever one at a ‘lights-out’ restaurant) but a second and then a third (or more than that, if you count the repeats!)
- I often think that Richard Curtis has a habit of injecting his own fantasies into his lead characters. Here, a key one is not only getting to have sex with Mary – a superb Rachel McAdam’s at her most gorgeous girl-next-door cutest – but being able to perform that first act time after time after time. Eventually, he learns what she likes sexually so she is mightily impressed with his performance! (I mean, I could argue, with events as shown, about Tim’s crazily short refractory period, but that would be being picky!)
- The supporting cast is impressive. Bill Nighy is at his Nighy-est as Tim’s Dad; Lindsay Duncan is once again marvellous as Tim’s long-suffering Mum**; Lydia Wilson, who is so brilliant playing the troubled Bohemian sister Kit Kat that you wonder why she hasn’t been a bigger name in the business since then; Richard Cordery is so ridiculous as the mad Uncle that you wonder why Curtis didn’t follow tradition in his films and call him ‘Bernard’; and Tom Hollander gets the biggest laughs of the film as the irascible and cynical playwright Harry.
- The film is also notable in featuring two actors that would go on to MUCH greater things. Margot Robbie is Tim’s lust-interest, the unspeakably sexy Charlotte: this was just before Robbie would storm into the world’s spotlight for ‘those scenes’ in “The Wolf of Wall Street“. And Vanessa Kirby, in only her fourth feature, plays Mary’s friend Joanna. Kirby of course would rise to fame through “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” and then TV’s “The Crown”.
- Curtis’s script deals some clever twists. One involving a child is a particularly devastating blow to the solar plexes. And if you don’t cry at the manipulative beach scene that Curtis throws into the finale, then you are officially not human!
Quiz Question: In what other film does Lindsey Duncan play an almost identical role of a wife, where a Gleeson is also involved? Answer below the Trailer!
Negatives:
- I’ve seen this film a few times now and always feel the same way. The first reel almost feels to me like utter perfection: 5*s for me and on a par with many other films that Curtis has either penned or directed: “Four Weddings…”; “Notting Hill”; “Love Actually”; “Yesterday“. The final reel is great too: the film concludes with some fine, moving, feelgood vibes. But somewhere in the second reel it loses its way for me. I can never quite put my finger on why that is. Perhaps all of the twisted narrative with Kit Kat gets in the way for me of the general romantic thrust of the story? But it just doesn’t quite work well with the rest of the film.
- The whole “holding hands to travel back in time” scene with Tim and Kit Kat is as hokey as hell!
Summary Thoughts:
I wouldn’t rate “About Time” as being one of Richard Curtis’s best, but it is still a highly enjoyable romance/comedy/drama and earns a worthy 4 stars for its entertainment value.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2PUMA6nFWk.
Question Answer
The answer is “H is for Hawk” in which Lindsey Duncan plays – in exactly similar vein – a grieving widow: a role that she has exactly the right looks for! The Gleeson linkage is that she is Domhnall Gleeson’s mother in “About Time” and Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall’s father, plays her deceased husband in “H is for Hawk“.
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