I think it is fair to say that About Time is a beautiful movie of a wonderous, tender, and maddeningly sweet love story. You are just bond to feel good about that.
Tim Lake (Domnhall Gleeson) is an ordinary young, quirky lad of Cornwall with not much to brag about, until one day his Father told him a family secret: The men in their family can travel through time. They can't, though, kill Hitler and change the history of mankind. For his much beloved Father, it is about book and book; but for Tim, it is about love. And when it comes to Tim's love-life, it is about Mary (Rachel McAdams).
As simple as it can be, we are naturally in love with the sincerity the movie offers from the beginning, and true to the message it carries, forgetting the time travel element by the end. Seeing the characters grow as the story goes are a bundle of joy, because we get to see so many form of love that's right in the feeling. It is not all about love, love, love, though; because there are bound to be grief and sadness and pain that comes with love. Richard Curtis is doing just a fit, clean job in capturing every emotions in such a beautiful gesture that made About Time gracefully wonderful.
Tim Lake is such a endearing character that created Domnhall Gleeson a special place in my heart forever. We just love Tim and Mary, period. Because romantic dramas are lately doomed with a heartbreaking tragedy, undeniable hardship, and often someone's dying too early, About Time is lightly a more humble story of a man and a woman with enviable love. True that the pair is getting all the spotlight, but we can't fall for the family's love any less. Growing up in equally enviable family whom rule number one is to dwell on beauty of life, young Tim is having the same insecurities we all seem to have about the future, because he didn't feel good enough. Time travel is one extraordinary thing, but it is not too long, through trials and errors, before he realized that it doesn't help him any good unless he himself does something good. In the end of the day, time travel doesn't win Mary for him. As the story goes, it is just heartwarming to see how much wiser and maturer Tim got. He is madly in love with his Dad, Mum, and adorable sister Kit-Kat just as much as he is madly in love with Mary. Dad is a figure you wish you had in your life--someone you couldn't bare to say goodbye. We learned about how much a big kind love like that can give us, and how much a simplest act of love can give to even a stranger we meet on the street.
To be fair, there are a lot plot-holes in the time travel aspects that left unexplained, even when you are only educated by Back To The Future. Some rules are too easily be broken and the consequences are relatively less scary than those we saw in Ashton Kutcher's Butterfly Effect. But this is a feel-good slice of life story of characters we just can love and love no matter what, and that's why I'm being so forgiving. The writing is beautiful. The casts are stunning. I missed the characters the moment the credits rolled and wished I had known them in my real life. I'd honestly like to thank Richard Curtis, because without trying to be exaggerating, I've learned life.
And in the end I think I've learned the final lesson from my travels in time; and I've even gone one step further than my father did: The truth is I now don't travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life. (Tim Lake)
