About Time is a Big, Old-Fashioned Tear-fest

I had a little bit of a headache after watching About Time due to a long cry.  By “long cry,” I mean that it started in the theater during the film, continued into the bathroom after the film, and I was still erupting in a few loose sobs on the way to the car.

It started with my friend, B, sitting next to me.  She was bawling before my brain clued me in that my throat was closing up from one of those giant lumps that form pre-tears.  And then I heard K sniffling down the aisle.  And finally I just let loose; one of those big, hard cries where you open the door and consider for a moment the enormity of life.  I mean, yes, we all have those moments during the day; usually in the form of worrying where we remember how precarious and precious life is.  But it’s not often that we’re sitting in a theater and suddenly realize that… oh my G-d… time is continuously moving and at some point, everyone we love will be gone.

Cue tears.

It wasn’t what I expected at all.  We joked that our husbands were probably home, thinking that we’d come home all amorous after watching a romantic comedy and we’d ravage them.  And maybe that is what would have happened if we had seen the filmmaker’s other movies like Love Actually or Notting Hill.  But that isn’t this film.  This film is sort of like Rachel Getting Married.  I mean, yes, that movie contains a wedding.  But it really isn’t the type of movie that makes you feel like getting laid.  It’s more the sort of film that makes you face plant on the comforter and just sob and sob and sob.

Which is all to say that I am 100% set on buying the film when it comes out on DVD, and it hasn’t even left the theater.  I’ve already looked to see if it’s available for pre-order because that’s how much I loved it.  And yes, I will likely go back and see it again.  And no, the holes in the plotline didn’t bother me.  Because it was that fabulous.  It was like having dinner with Chris Hemsworth (how he looks in Rush, not how he looks in Thor) and having him suddenly vomit on you.  I mean, yes, you’re covered in vomit, but you’re having dinner with Chris Hemsworth.  So you can totally ignore the chunks of food in your lap because… come on… he’s just so cute.  That’s how good this film is.  It can vomit on you, and you don’t mind.

Not that you’ll get vomited on if you go see it.

I got home and wrote my best friend that I thought I was seeing a love story, but I turned out to be seeing a LIFE story.  She couldn’t even respond to that cheesy line at all.  I mean, completely ignored it.  But that’s how emotional I was walking in from the film.

So… yeah… see it.  If for nothing else, the moment that Bill Weasley and Mr. Dursley are in the same room which is all kinds of wrong, but is also all kinds of right.

Go with someone who will cry with you; not some stoic movie watcher who is going to point out that there are a bunch of times they bend their own time traveling rules. I went with a bunch of girl friends, and I’m so glad we took one car because it was the best ride home.