About Time

As we were due to screen a film the day after Valentine's day we decided to select a rom com. there do not seem to have been too many recent such films, certainly none that would appeal to our audiences, so we went back in time to choose this one.

I had missed it at the cinema and remembered the positive reviews, and the combination of director and stars promised an enjoyable film. I enjoyed it, although it was not in the same league as the films that Curtis had written for Hugh Grant, but any film with a ginger-haired hero called Tim has to be worth watching.

Here are my notes:

About Time

UK 2013          123 minutes

Director:          Richard Curtis

Starring:            Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy

Awards and Nominations

• Three wins and ten nominations

“As far as we know, Richard Curtis cannot travel through time. But the kingpin of the Britcom can get a huge movie off the ground. And, along with the possible, Curtis has managed to achieve the impossible. Specifically: he has gone back to 1993 and remade Groundhog Day with a ginger Hugh Grant.”

Catherine Shoard

At the age of 21 Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) learns from his father (Bill Nighy) that the adult men in his family have the ability to travel back in time: they cannot change history, but they can change what has happened in their own lives. When Tim falls in love with Mary (Rachel McAdams) he uses his powers to woo her successfully, but inevitably the subsequent use of his powers has other unforeseen consequences for their future lives together.

In the immortal words of the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) in Blink time is “a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey wimey stuff”; as such stories about time travel are popular with scriptwriters as it gives them so much flexibility with their plots. About Time is Richard Curtis’s first foray into what could be called science fantasy rom com and follows in the tracks of the classic Groundhog Day (1993) as well as Sliding Doors (1998) and more recently The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) (which also starred Rachel McAdams). However Curtis manages to infuse the concept with his own brand of a particularly English type of rom com that produced the classic screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003), and the film builds on these thematic links by the casting of Bill Nighy, who was a member of the large ensemble cast for Love Actually, and Domhnall Gleeson, described by one critic as a ginger replicant Hugh Grant, the star of the earlier films that Curtis had written.

The film was well reviewed despite several gaping plot holes relating to the rules governing time travel: Doctor Who always manages to skirt such inconsistencies by allowing the Doctor to claim, depending on the exigencies of the plot, either that time can be rewritten or that a particular event is a fixed point in time that cannot under any circumstances be changed. Nonetheless the film was a commercial success, especially in South Korea where it became a surprise hit.

Richard Curtis announced that this film, his third that he has directed, is likely to be his last as director, although he would continue to work in the film industry. He is currently working on the story for the film to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which will be released later in 2018. In parallel with his film work Curtis has worked extensively for television where he has written scripts for Blackadder, Mr Bean, The Vicar of Dibley and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Somewhat unexpectedly, although in the circumstances quite relevant for this film, in 2010 he even wrote a story for Doctor Who, which ended with the Doctor bringing Vincent van Gogh to present day Paris to see his work in the Musée d'Orsay (with Bill Nighy playing an uncredited role as a bowtie-wearing art curator).

Here's a link to the trailer: