Review: Time Traveller (2010)

This week I bring to you another random Netflix film fished out of the mix and crammed into two hours of my life that could have probably best been used doing something else. The latest addition is a Japanese flick called Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Though Time.  This movie has the strange distinction of being based upon a manga that was written to continue another story that was written way back in 1967.  Yes, it’s a super remake/reboot/continuation and it shows many of the flaws that all such undertakings manifest.

The story follows Akari Yoshiyama, the daughter of pharmaceutical researcher Kazuko.  The mother of the pair happens to be working on a way to travel through time by using a special liquid.  This is, apparently, all based on the original storyline, whereby Kazuko meets and falls in love with a time traveller, so now she’s trying to figure out a way to visit him again.  But alas, Kazuko has an accident and ends up in a coma.  In a brief moment of clarity, she calls upon her daughter to go back in time using the serum she produced and deliver a message to her former love.

And so off Akari goes, to journey to 1972 and fulfill her mother’s wish.  Unfortunately, she ends up in 1974 (after a very annoying time travel scene) and now has to track down the guy her mother wants her to find.  While there, she meets up with the young version of her uncle and her mother and discovers who her father is (a fact so far unknown).  Eventually she figures out a way to attract the time traveller’s attention and deliver the message.  Sad things happen, people are killed and Akari returns home sans her memories of the occasion.

The best part of this film is the small interactions between the various characters.  It really feels like they’re hanging out in 1974 Japan and each character introduced feels genuine.  The worst part of the film is that these interactions are pretty much all that’s enjoyable.  The main story and tragic ending go well enough, if a bit cliché, but the pretense used to get the story rolling is painfully and poorly written.  It’s almost as if they made the central 80 percent of the film first and then tacked on the beginning and ending in a rush.  Also, the romance of the film follows the unfortunate pattern that many Japanese films do by trying to imitate overblown American romance.  I was just waiting for wind to start blowing through people’s hair.

If you want a nice, light romance film with a twist, then you may end up liking Time Traveller.  If you’re critical of your foreign cinema and can’t stand sitting through brief bits of half-assed writing, then avoid it.  If you want another, much better time travel romance to watch, check out the Korean film Il Mare.  That one is definitely worth the two hours.

Time Traveller poster courtesy of yesasia.com