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Quantum Sleep

There's enough manipulative pap in "The Time Traveler's Wife," based on the popular tear-jerking novel by Audrey Niffenegger, to make even Nicholas Sparks roll his eyes. Before the book was released to the public in 2003, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (in the pre-Brangelina days) saw its big-screen potential and scooped up the film rights. But somewhere from page to projector, something went horribly amiss.

People fell in love with the story, about a Chicago librarian (Eric Bana) with a gene that makes him randomly time travel, and the wife (Rachel McAdams) who loves him regardless, but the film is unlikely to meet the same adoration. It's an odd blend of creepy and calculated. When Clare first sees Henry, she's 6 years old, playing in a meadow, and he's a grown man who knows they end up together in the future. ("It's like gravity -- big events pull you in," he later explains.) Since he loses his clothes whenever he transports, he asks to borrow her blanket so he can cover up. Normally, something like that would appear on a Dateline special, but in this case it's "romantic." 

Fast forward and Henry and Clare say wedding vows (though he disappears a few times during the event, returning at different ages); ponder having kids (which freaks him out, as his condition could be inherited); and occasionally bicker (she gets pissed one year when he transports and misses Christmas). He has no control over when he travels, though he frequently goes to the same places, and he can't prevent bad things from happening. He can, however, help her win the lottery: "There are many downsides to my condition, but this isn't one of them," he says, as she takes home $5 million.

It's all too ludicrous and tedious to warrant an emotional connection. Director Robert Schwentke ("Flightplan") and writer Bruce Joel Rubin ("Ghost") can't make such a lame premise coagulate on screen, relying strictly on extended, puppy-dog gazes between the leads and a cloying piano score that distracts from every scene. Bana and McAdams, both talented and appealing, are reduced to boringly one-dimensional characters -- he of the distant, tortured variety; she of the pained, longing kind. Then there's Ron Livingston, who's brought on as comic relief, but he just seems like he's killing time on his way to a film he actually wants to do. 

"The Time Traveler's Wife" is not the second coming of "The Notebook" -- it's not even "Somewhere In Time" for the YouTube generation. It's a gimmicky, lackluster flop that is both irksome and drenched in bogus sentiment. Where's Doc Brown when you really need him?