Richard Curtis’s latest isn’t terribly surprising. Actually it's never surprising. It’s affable and charming - even if it does stumble and bumble in the fashion of most of Curtis’s lead actors - and it's often well observed, with numerous little moments that make the world feel satisfyingly lived in; but surprise never numbers among its achievements.
There might be a warped argument for the film's pervasive feeling of stolid sameness in that Domhnall Gleeson (whose name I have misspelt three different ways thus far), who plays the awkward, self deprecating bundle of energy that is our hero, is rarely caught unawares, or at least not for long, since he can live each day or moment as many times as he likes, having inherited his family's 'gift', passed down from father to son: the ability to travel to any point in his past and, if he sees fit, alter it for (he hopes) the better. His principal aim? Getting a girlfriend and... Well... Actually that's it. He does ask his father (played by a surprisingly reigned in Bill Nighy) about using the ability to get money and power, but the suggestion is waved off; that path does not lead to happiness, and that's the last we hear of that possible plot avenue. It's one of the few moments when the film does things in short hand. After that it's all long hand. If a scene could be done and dusted in three terse lines, in About Time it's likely to play out for fifteen halting ones. Fortunately no one writes semi-incoherent stuttering like Curtis, and few have ever delivered it so well as the almost excessively likeable Gleeson.
The rest of the cast are no less likeable: Nighy is better than he's been in years; Lindsay Duncan, as Gleeson's mother, has barely a dozen lines but imbues each one with a spiky, distant, yet somehow affectionate tone which leaves a more lasting impression than you'd imagine; Tom Hollander is brilliantly antagonistic as Curtis's staple screwball character; and Rachel McAdams, as the object of Gleeson's affections, continues to be effective at playing Rachel McAdams.
Curtis wisely sidesteps Groundhog Day comparisons by having Gleeson only tweak his past to line up moments rather than to perfect them. Gleeson is already a decent sort, he doesn't need to change or orchestrate things to make himself look better. (Not that he doesn't do that, but it's kept to a minimum. If he rewound time whenever he misspoke then it'd be days before we got out of the first act.) What he needs to do is stop fretting about the little things and wake up to the world around him. That's the main idea at play here, which is fine, but it doesn't need a 123-minute running time to get it across. The flip side is that if Curtis streamlined the film then it's unlikely that it'd worked half as well as it does. Part of its charm is in its meandering aimless manner, making it feel like a slice of life.
There's little that's surprising about where the story eventually goes and what Gleeson eventually learns, but it just about gets away with it because Curtis believes in it to his core and Gleeson completely sells us on his own journey to these little discoveries about life.
Overall: 7/10
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