So many films depict their protagonists acquiring superpowers, and then go on to depict them doing something totally unrealistic with them, like helping the needy or fighting bad guys. In About Time, from Notting Hill/Bridget Jones/Love Actually writer Richard Curtis, 21-year-old protagonist Tim, played by Domhnall Gleeson, finds out from his dad Bill Nighy that he, like all the men in his family, has the power to time travel. So what does Tim do? Does he kill Hitler? Talk Mao out of the great leap forward? Cure his grandma’s lung cancer by making sure she never started smoking in the first place? No, he does what any horse-faced limey ape in his situation would do: he uses his powers to get his greasy ginger hands on Rachel McAdams’ sweet, sweet butt meat. Realistic.
I despise Love Actually, but I appreciate that this is at least not just a series of cheesy rom-com vignettes smashed together. That, and if you’re trying to get the audience to identify with the guy who spends a whole movie trying to get the girl, it helps if the girl is Rachel McAdams. It’s such a bummer that she and Ryan Gosling didn’t work out. If she and Baby Goose had mated, she would’ve given birth to a basket of corgi puppies that flew out of her vagina on a rainbow.
