About Time (2013). Courtesy Universal Pictures / Working Title Films.
Tim Lake can step into a dark space, think about a moment in his past and try it again. In About Time, that ability first looks useful for the usual reasons: embarrassment can be corrected, a conversation improved, a disastrous evening given another chance. Domhnall Gleeson makes Tim's uncertainty funny before Richard Curtis starts asking how much of a life can be spent revising it.
Curtis wrote and directed the 2013 film, with Rachel McAdams as Mary and Bill Nighy as Tim's father. The family explains the gift without turning the story into a technical puzzle. What matters is the temptation it creates. Tim can approach other people with knowledge they do not share, yet being better prepared does not mean he understands what they want or knows what he should change.
Mary gives the early experiments their romantic focus. A conversation can seem wonderfully spontaneous to her while Tim is trying to recover something that already happened to him. The comedy depends on that imbalance. McAdams supplies warmth and impatience of her own, keeping Mary from feeling like a reward waiting at the end of Tim's best attempt. Their relationship eventually has to make room for less carefully arranged moments.
On Working Title's official film page, Curtis explains the idea behind the premise: someone who could choose any day might still decide that an ordinary one was enough. That thought becomes more persuasive as the film moves toward family life. The rush of a first meeting gives way to meals, work, children and the small complications that would rarely make anyone's list of perfect memories.
Nighy's scenes with Gleeson give the fantasy a different measure of time. Their conversations have the ease of people who have spent years learning one another's rhythms. The pauses, dry jokes and familiar surroundings are part of what Tim wants to preserve. Repeating a visit can offer comfort, but the film does not make the wish to return indefinitely into a solution to loss.
A wedding disrupted by weather catches the film's argument particularly well. The conditions are wrong; the people are still there. Curtis lets disorder become part of the occasion rather than a problem that must be erased before happiness can begin. About Time's most affecting use of its premise is to make those unrepeatable details visible. Tim can change a day, but he still has to notice the one he is living.
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