The Time Traveler’s Wife

It’s not really love that complicates things between Clare (Rachel McAdams) and Henry (Eric Bana) but, instead, Henry’s tendency to inconveniently melt in and out of the present, finding himself unceremoniously stranded somewhere in time, naked. The “absentee time-traveling partner” is an open invitation to apply your own metaphor — I favor a chronic-blackout-drinking reading, but it’s elastic enough for whatever. Wife recalls a few other timeline-tangled romances but forgoes any sense of mystery, dealing in the daily difficulties of synchronizing schedules, doctors’ appointments, vasectomies, pregnancies, and meeting friends and parents (all crowding the movie and further diluting the already-limited rapport of the central lovers). This thoroughness may impress fans of the best-seller source novel but will disappoint anyone looking for transport from a movie — being a time traveler’s wife, it turns out, is mostly a drag.