REVIEW: About Time

About Time is predictable, well, as predictable as a rom-com including a lead male who can time travel and change the course of his life forever can be. Time travel and romance. What more could you want? It is straightforward in the sense that it’s a romantic comedy where a boy falls in love with a girl who he marries, they have children and in the end, they live happily ever after. The only problem arises from Bill Nighy telling him he can time travel. All he has to do is close his eyes in a dark place (cupboards ideally) and he can go to the time he imagines.

Perpetually obsessed with time travel the opportunity to rewrite my past intrigues me. There are second, third, fourth chances. Mistakes erased, regrets destroyed. Though that’s another problem. He goes back in time, erased his date and he loses the girl’s number. Their date never happened. Forgotten is the pitch-black restaurant where they confessed their love for Kate Moss, hatred of blind dates and shared nervous laughter. That instant connection was gone. This is where it becomes a little more confusing. Here follows a mixture of hilariously awkward endeavours to regain the heart of his one true love, who doesn’t happen to know him at all.

More ups and downs follow, all helped and hindered by time travel. This power, that many wish to possess, begins to conflict with his life. In the end, listening to the advice of his father, he chooses to live everyday normally, then goes back in time and lives it again properly. Noticing the way the sun shines through the blinds illuminating the minuscule particle of dust suspended in the air. Taking the time to smile at strangers, give his children breakfast and have fun with life. But this then changes again. He decides to just live every day just once.

Time travelling films can be confusing but this one isn’t. Live every day, like it’s your last.

That’s it. And it’s about time we got on with it.