“About Time” Repetitive and Tedious to a Fault

“Repetitive and Tedious to a Fault”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

About Time is the latest schmaltzy romantic comedy written by Richard Curtis, who also wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love, Actually.

This one, however, adds the notion of time travel to the already tedious concept of “meet cute” in romantic comedies.

That is correct. If the hero has the ability to go back in time, then he can fix whatever he did wrong when he first met the perfect girl for him.

Tim is our hero, and on his 21st birthday, his father, played by Bill Nighy, takes Tim aside and tells him, “The men in this family have always had the ability to travel in time.”

However, they can only go back in time, not forward, and how to do it is the easy bit.

They just go into a dark place, clinch their fists, think of when they want to go to, and when they step out of the dark place, they are there.

I mean “then.”

So, Tim tries it, and, sure enough, it works, although he isn’t able to achieve the result he wanted with the first girl he believed was the perfect girl for him.

Then Tim is off to London to begin his career as a lawyer and to keep searching for the perfect girl.

Tim also has trouble fixing the opening night of a play written by the relative he is staying with, and we have to watch everything leading up to both attempts.

Then Tim meets Mary, an American girl working in London, who is played by Rachel McAdams.

Unfortunately, when they meet, Tim is with his best friend, and they meet Mary and her friend in a club that is completely dark, which has nothing to do with Tim’s ability to travel in time, but the audience has to sit and watch a black screen while the actors talk.

Well, needless to say, things don’t go the way Tim wanted them to this time, either, and the audience has to watch each time Tim tries to correct the situation.

Tim’s time travel in this movie isn’t limited to Tim’s attempt to find the perfect girl, either. Oh, no. Not by a long shot.

About Time takes too long to get started and too long to end, and it is repetitive and tedious to a fault.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”