Audrey Niffenegger’s much-praised bestseller The Time Traveler’s Wife hardly seemed like a good contender for adaptation to film. As genetic oddity Henry DeTamble inadvertently and unwillingly jumps through time, he and the love of his life, Claire, create a complicated, asynchronous history: She first meets him when she’s six years old, he first meets her much later in his life. They’re endlessly out of sync, and struggling to bridge their emotional gaps. The resulting complicated, masterfully created tangle of timelines didn’t seem likely to make it to the screen intact. But after a lengthy, troubled production history, including a year on the shelf, the film is finally hitting theaters. And in the hands of director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost, Deep Impact), the problem isn’t the timeline—it’s everything else.
Keep scrolling for more great stories from A.V. Club.