My wife and I went to see About Time under the mistaken impression that it was a Mike Newel film. Actually, it’s a Richard Curtis film, the same guy that made the extremely manipulative yet undeniably trendsetting film Love Actually, a film I’ve never really warmed to. About Time proved to be more my style.

As I was watching About Time I felt mildly disappointed. Then later in the day I suddenly started noticing all its merits and my feeling of initial disappointment started to dissipate. I think this happened because the (very good) trailer for About Time makes copious use of alternate takes, many of which seemed superior to the takes that were actually chosen for the film. The trailer also implies a very different storyline from the one told in the film. These two things created for me a dissonance that mildly distracted me the entire movie – I think the makers of the trailer were a bit too gung-ho for their own good.

Setting aside the distracting expectations of the preview, About Time is a sweet, low-key film on love and life, not super-deep, but charming and enjoyable. This film does not manipulate you – nothing bad happens, and there’s no heavy-handed agenda being rammed down your throat. The time-travel gimmick is frequently done in somewhat clunky fashion (occasionally it’s done quite well,) but that seems less and less important as the film wears on. I think the point of the movie is that even if you could travel in time, you would quickly realize that it was a very limited boon, and I must say About Time did manage to make a fairly reasonable case for this unlikely sentiment. All the acting is good across the board, especially Bill Nighy, who between this and Marigold Hotel is starting to show an exceptional talent in warm leading roles. The music was a bit underwhelming, but it was not terrible.

I would recommend About Time.