Save time; skip ‘Wife’

Time traveling is a great convenience that can help a screenwriter avoid nuisances such as motivation, character development and conflict resolution. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” makes great use of this advantage.

This original romance with a sci-fi element thrown in is about two people, Henry (Eric Bana) and Clare (Rachel McAdams), who fall in love after having met one another at various points in their lives because at any given moment – with no control of his own – Henry can travel through time.

The film follows no set of rules, can generate problems and solutions out of thin air to move the story along and has more peculiarities and questions than the writing or the actors can remedy.

Bana and McAdams have good on-screen chemistry, but they’ve both been better in other films this year. Worse yet, their characters’ love seems to be a gimmick of the story’s time travel ploy.

This couple would benefit from some counseling sessions, but Henry would probably just skip out on those, too.