RACHEL MCADAMS AND DOMHNALL GLEESON IN ABOUT TIME

Second chances

Richard Curtis writes his own screenplays, and well he might, since he got a First in English at Oxford. Oxford notwithstanding, he is a pop writer, a Brit from New Zealand originally who turns out English equivalents of Nora Ephron. And no harm in that. If Notting Hill wasn't so great, Love, Actually was pretty good, and Hugh Grant was shown to best advantage in both, as well as in several other films Curtis wrote the screenplays for. Unfortunately Curtiss turns to sentimentality and soppy life messages in this outing, but good fun is had by all and there's some fast, snappy rom-com action before the treacle begins to flow. Every cast member achieves maximum cuteness, whether 20-something or 60-something. Only one character dares to be rude and narcissistic, and that's the insufferable playwright whom the young protagonist goes to live with when he comes from his preposterously lovely, charmingly eccentric family life in Cornwall to become a lawyer in London. This is Harry, and he's played by Tom Hollander. If only there were more Harrys, and more and less one-note Tom Hollanders, this movie might seem less bland and banal. But you'd also have to ditch the basic premise, from which comes the title.

You may not have heard of Domhnall Gleeson. Domhnall Gleeson isn't a looker like Hugh Grant, but he makes a better everyman. He's really 30, but sometimes it takes a while to become an emerging star. Domhnall is Irish, but he does the posh-ish English accent that predominates here -- no glottal stops or regionalisms --and plays Tim, son of Bill Nighy, who on Tim's 21st birthday at that Cornwall paradise, informs him that male members of the family have the gift of time-travel. Just go into a dark place, make fists, and focus hard on where you want to go back to and you're there. (This scene and the many that follow is really more enjoyable for clear enunciation and good timing than for actual content.)

His newly discovered skill means that henceforth Tim gets second chances on all his encounters with the love of his life, as well as several almost-loves along the way. But wouldn't this ability to re-stage interactions with the female sex have benefitted Tim more during those awkward teenage years, when nothing seems to go right? Anyway, the gift of correction -- like screenplay rewrites -- allows Tim to be a success with the lady who fills that slot taken up by Julia Roberts in Notting Hill: a pretty young American woman with a rather large mouth, the better to smile at us with and draw in the Stateside audience.

Tim's skill also enables him to save Harry's drama career, and simultaneously save an actor, played by Richard E. Grant, from ignominy. (This sequence also features the late Richard Griffiths in his final appearance.) But when Tim, now married to Mary (McAdams) and with a suitably adorable kid, tries to use time travel to save his ill-starred sister Kit Kat (Lydia Wilson) from a bad accident, he runs into a technical snarl. Sometimes going too far back will cause other things to change that you want to keep.

Sometimes it also seems this repetitious and often pointless screenplay is simply a way to escape from the fact that Curtis hasn't come up with a very interesting or amusing story, and has to keep tweaking it with these time travel alterations. They create a kind of giddy excitement, a string of what-ifs or suppose-we-didn'ts that make Tim's young life seem like a roller coaster, one that can't go wrong. Or can go wrong at first, but then can be instantly fixed, by squeezing one's fists in a closet. This is so obviously an encouragement of fairy tale thinking that Curtis has to undercut it at the end, after a saccharine goodbye to cancer-ridden Dad Bill Nighy, with the message that all in all, it's best to play the hand life deals you. We should have seen that coming, though we wish it wouldn't. Doesn't it mean all this stuff was pointless and unnecessary?

But, as I said, everybody is cute. That includes Nighy, a breezy Mum played by Lindsay Duncan (just seen as Jim Broadbent's dicey wife in Le Weekend), and the immaculately dressed but otherwise functionless Uncle D (Richard Cordery), whose one-note schtick is never to quite know what's going on. He gets saccharine toward the end too.

It's a bit strange that the English, masters of irony and the sardonic world-view, should have become a source of movies notable for their silly, lightweight humor and overwhelming sentimentality. (The director seems to think he can find that in Dickins.) But then, while this takes place in England, and Curtis has that First from Oxford, he still comes from New Zealand. Small comfort perhaps for those of us who long for Jane Austen and Pinter.

About Time, a busy 123 mins., debuted at Edinburgh June 2013 and has opened in many countries, including the UK 4 Sept. It opens in the US (limited) 1 Nov. Screened for this review as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. Opening in the US 8 Nov. 2013.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.