About Time

A romantic comedy with a time-travel twist, About Time also has a bit of a serious streak. The central romance of the tale brings a young, klutzy, redheaded British lawyer Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) together with perky American graduate student Mary (Rachel McAdams), but the relationship between Tim and his father (Bill Nighy) is no less crucial. Frisky humor is in play with both relationships, but the glimpses of serious drama come mostly via Tim’s dad. And, as we learn early on, a limited but real ability to travel in time is an attribute shared by all of the males in Tim’s family. Much of About Time plays like an agreeably rambunctious exercise in wish fulfillment, and writer-director Richard Curtis seems to recognize the need for something to offset the nonstop sweetness and light of the Tim-Mary plot. And so, almost as an afterthought, we get intimations of mortality and sorrow in the last reels. Cinemark 14. Rated R J.C.S.