SummaryThe marriage between Clare (Rose Leslie) and Henry (Theo James) is complicated by time travel in this Steven Moffat adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel of the same name.
SummaryThe marriage between Clare (Rose Leslie) and Henry (Theo James) is complicated by time travel in this Steven Moffat adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel of the same name.
The idea of different chronological variants of the same character wandering the same timeline would be a forbidden paradox in most time-travel tales. But The Time Traveler's Wife embraces it. Because highly emotional moments in his life act as a kind of magnet for Henry's temporal tumbles, there are certain moments—the awful ones, mostly, like the death of his mother—where there are as many as 20 versions of him looking on, all as dumbstruck with horror as they were the first time they witnessed it.
Every time it feels as though the show might actually want to have a real conversation about fate, free will, or consequences, it slides away from the implication without ever fully looking it in the face.
The Time Traveler’s Wife does not have the power of the unexpected. But it has a modest, formulaic appeal that will likely keep you going back (and back) for more.
It plays out like a passable Channel 5 daytime film, not a supposedly prestige series from HBO. The adaptation is so lazy that episodes begin with the lead characters reading lines straight into the camera, rather than anyone making the effort to work them into the script.
This is still a grown man interacting with the woman he'll eventually be sleeping with while she is a child playing with a toy horse. He's weirded out by it, and rightly so; therefore, so are we. Somehow there must be a means of pulling off these scenes in ways that don't make a person's skin crawl, but Moffat has not cracked that nut. ... Whether the main flaw in "The Time Traveler's Wife" is in the flatness of the prose or the emotional disconnect in the delivery is hard to say, but together they conspire to transform Clare into little more than a construct waiting to be animated.
To be clear, the drama has many problems: Bad wigs, limp characterization, indifferent plotting. As grown-up Clare, Rose Leslie has to say one ridiculous thing after another.
With its “Twilight”-level trite dialogue and worldview, lack of adventures and alleged love story that is more like a grooming story, this show is so bad on every level that it is hard to pinpoint blame.
Time travel as a metaphor for memory and expectations. It's not supposed to be a clean cut romantic comedy because life and love are complicated. Death comes for us all. Relationships are about adapting. It's never really the fairy tale of happily ever after, only happy for a while. Great series that deserved smarter critics.
This is the adaptation of the book I've been waiting for, Theo James and Rose Leslie rocked as Clare and Steven Moffat gets the tone of the book so right. It shows that Audrey was involved as a consultant. Eagerly waiting for the next episode, wish I could binge!