Release Date: August 14, 2009

(out of 4)

The out of sequence structured "The Time Traveler’s Wife" has us wondering about the paradoxes of two different versions of the traveler – one young and one old – arriving approximately in the same space and time. The time travel movie always gets you thinking about such paradoxes. But this time don’t chew so hard. It’s better in this particular case if you allow the paradoxes to take a backseat.

This is at times a very mush romantic melodrama, but it’s also very nice with gentle souls at its center. Henry (Eric Bana) is the put-upon time traveler who bounces along the time continuum with no navigation control of where he’s going to end up. Clare (Rachel McAdams) is the woman that loves him patiently, really never knowing when he’s going to return.

It’s a lifelong courtship of Henry seeing Clare through different periods of her life. And Clare grows up on her rich meadow prairie, born to the kind of bluebloods who hunt deer for sport, seeing Henry at different ages when he arrives from the future. Eventually their love grows rich enough for them to get married, with the oddity that a silver-haired 40-ish Henry replaces the strapping late 20’s Henry at the altar.

Time travel movies always put their hero under some kind of duress upon departure. In this movie, Henry winds up naked wherever he lands up (you can’t take your clothes or your wallet). This leaves Henry with the constant problem of thieving for money and clothes when he arrives in a new time. Henry has never had much stability outside a library research job. Henry loves Clare because it is his one eternal thing he can depend on.

But what does Clare get out of this relationship with a guy who just vanishes into thin air at any given time? Well, she gets a strapping dreamboat guy who is kind, considerate and sincere, and all those other fairytale qualities. That’s basically what “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is, a nice fairy tale that happens to be beautifully photographed in constant idyllic sunglow. The actors are beautiful and they have appealing chemistry together. For Eric Bana (“Munich”), it’s his first romantic drama success. For Rachel McAdams, it’s her second romantic drama success following “The Notebook.” In this age of jaded romantic films, an actress is lucky if she gets one good endearing film within the genre. McAdams has already appeared in two that will appeal to the Kleenex crowd with fine applause.

Just really, think about the gobs of crap Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl and Anne Hathaway have gotten mixed up in. McAdams is a class act, only second to Julia Roberts, in appearing in swirling romantic fables that are… actually romantic. The story has one difficult complication: the difficulty of conceiving a healthy child unaffected by dad’s genes. You ache in sympathy for the characters. Yet “The Time Traveler’s Wife” doesn’t amount to be as big a deal as “The Notebook” which had stronger and richer themes, but it does remind you when a time when in movies a Big Movie Kiss felt like a big deal.