Review: "My Zoe"

 

I remember screening "Funny People" some years ago and 80 minutes in I was thinking, "This is one of the best movies I've seen this year." And then the film systematically flushed itself down a toilet in a way I'd never seen.

"My Zoe" doesn't start quite that high or end that low. But still, I was so incredibly engaged by this heartrending drama from writer/director/star Julie Delpy, a look at a fractured marriage that reaches crisis when their young daughter is injured. Then it becomes something completely else. Something that, while it has merits on its own, doesn't belong to the first part.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum on how to review "My Zoe," since I think hearing exactly what the second part is might push people away from giving it a chance, people who maybe won't find the disconnect as jarring as I did.

So the best course seems to write two halves of a review, and give you the option of reading just the first, or the second, or both. Ready? Here goes.

A ravishingly poignant family drama

Julie Delpy has been in a lot of movies about relationships, and started making her own some years ago. The French actress is best known in American circles for "Before Sunrise" and its sequels with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke, in which a couple flirt with the beginnings of a relationship.

Now she gives us "My Zoe," a wrenching family drama about a man and wife who are ending their marriage, and their titular daughter becomes another piece of collateral in the acrimonious split.

Isabelle (Delpy) and James (Richard Armitage) are middle-aged and well-to-do, living in Berlin despite coming from France and England, respectively. As the story opens they have recently separated and are working out a joint custody arrangement. 

Zoe, played by Sophia Ally, is a bright bundle of 7-year-old joy. She seems not to notice the way her parents subtlety dig at each other during their hand-offs. They constantly talk about "my time" with Zoe as if it is a fungible commodity to be bickered and bartered over. For example, Isabelle insists on accompanying James and Zoe to her soccer game, even though she must soon leave it for work, just because she doesn't want to surrender an allotted hour.

Armitage and Delpy are fantastic together, even though their scenes are hard to watch. We see the years of faded joy and pain etched in their every word and expression. Everything is an exchange of guilt and blame. We might first look unkindly upon her because Isabelle cheated on James with another man (Saleh Bakri), whom she sneaks into her apartment while Zoe is asleep.

But James has major creeper vibes. He's controlling and manipulative, seems incapable of accepting blame, and there's a hint of physical abuse in the past. At one point he refused intimacy for three years, which would drive any person into another's arms. James has a way of encompassing someone in a warm embrace, but we can't help notice his strong hand wrapping the back of their neck.

Things come to a fore when Zoe comes down with a strange malady. Isabelle thinks it's just a simple cold at first, but in the morning the girl won't wake. At the hospital the diagnosis quickly becomes more severe, and there are haunting questions about injuries and harm.

Sitting in the waiting room, James and Isabelle circle each other like wounded animals. They spit insults and question the foundations of their relationship. It seems James wants her back despite all this, but Isabelle has gained strength with her scars.

As Zoe's life hangs in the balance, can her parents ever put aside their hatred for each other to be a family again?

A disconcerting look at the quandaries of science

What would you do if your child was lying brain dead in a hospital, with no hope of recovery? What if you were a scientist who saw a slim but hopeful chance of bringing them back, even if it meant setting aside every ethical standard you'd ever striven for?

That's the quandary of Isabelle (July Delpy), a French immunologist whose life is upturned when her 7-year-old daughter, Zoe (Sophia Ally), suffers a freak accident that results in a brain hematoma. The doctors operate and are optimistic at first, but it soon becomes clear she will never recover. They bring up the aching question of donating her organs so other children in that same hospital will live. What do you do?

Compounding the situation is that her estranged husband, James (Richard Armitage), wants to let Zoe pass. Despite the poisonous end to their relationship, he insists they should reunite in their daughter's memory. But Isabelle won't let go of her daughter -- ever.

She travels to Moscow to consult with a controversial doctor, Thomas Fischer (Daniel Brüh). He's found a way to impregnate women well past the age previously thought possible, and is catering to an international clientele of well-heeled types. But can he clone Zoe?

He refuses, at first. Fischer has been hounded by the scientific community, setting up in Russia to avoid censure and even prosecution. But he's intrigued by the possibility of Isabelle's case, or should I say Zoe's. They initiate a quiet experiment, knowing the chances are low and the risks are high. As scientists, they develop a shorthand of communicating and something like a friendship begins to develop between them.

Fischer's wife, Laura (Gemma Arterton), is ardently opposed to the move. She knows what their family has to lose. But she meets with Isabelle to convey her concerns, and the women end up bonding over their shared experience as mothers. Laura can't help but notice the way Isabelle speaks about Zoe in the present tense. But can a clone really be the same person who was lost?

Eventually, James turns up again for one more try at a reconciliation. He's horrified when he learns what Isabelle is trying to do, seeing it as a theft of his own parenthood. They seem poised to reignite their long war, with their daughter -- or at least her ghost represented as DNA in test tubes -- treated as a prize to be divided.

.......................................

OK, we're back. Depending on which part(s) you read, those both sound like promising premises. But Delpy turns so sharply from one to the other, we feel whiplashed and discombobulated. 

My take is she really wants the movie to be about the second part, but spends the bulk of the movie setting it up so well that she's made another, better story entirely. Like Isabelle and James, the two pieces each have flaws and attributes -- but are utterly incompatible. 

 

Review: "Blackbird"

"You didn't raise us to be strong. You just raised us not to bother you with weakness!"

                                                                                    --Anna

"Blackbird" is one of those rare movies that held few surprises for me, but I still embraced every moment I spent with it. 

It's very much an "actors' film," without any real plot other than a bunch of characters getting together, interacting and reacting. It's remade from a Danish film by Billie August (unseen by me), directed by Roger Michell ("Notting Hill") from a script by Christian Torpe. 

The cast is terrific, and it's a movie that's warmhearted but not without considerable tension and pain.

It stars Susan Sarandon, still luminous at 73, as a woman named Lily who is dying. She has some sort of degenerative disease that will eventually leave her unable to walk, talk or even breathe on her own, so she has decided to hurry things along by undertaking physician-assisted suicide, which in her case the doctor also being her husband, Paul (Sam Neill). 

Lily and Paul have let everyone know their plans and have gathered their extended family to their beach house for one last weekend of togetherness and goodbyes. After they leave Sunday evening, she will drink something Paul has prepared for her and let go. It's her (fiercely defended) choice.

Of course, the weekend will not proceed with utter tranquility. There are built-up tensions with their two daughters, well-played by Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska, and within their own family units, that will come out and spark arguments and recriminations. 

You can feel the slow-burn buildup to these outbreaks coming a long way off. And yet, strangely, the moments never felt artificial or hurried. They seemed more like the revolutions of the tide, which comes rolling in whether you want it to or not.

Lily is the clear alpha in the family, a woman who doesn't necessarily like to be the center of attention but absolutely insists on being the center of power. Paul seems content to adore her, support her and take a back seat to the interpersonal dynamics. 

Lily has a good heart but often doesn't see how her desire for things to be a certain way can cause them to go astray. She has a tendency to delude herself, insisting things are as she wants them to be rather than the way they really turned out.

Michell starts off shooting mostly from medium distance, slowly bringing the camera closer to the actors' faces as the story goes on. I knew that Winslet was in this movie and kept waiting for her to show up, and I think was 30 minutes in before I realized older daughter Jennifer was her. Somehow her ponytail, owlish glasses and hard, flat American accent had me completely fooled. 

Jennifer has a lot to be thankful for in her life, but instead obsesses with "straightening the picture frames," as someone aptly puts it. She's very critical of everyone, including herself, and can't seem to just sit back and let the sun shine in.

Her husband, Michael (Rainn Wilson), is likeable but diffident, the kind of guy who tends to have his nose buried in a newspaper or book, and most of his conversations with other people have a "did you know?" hook to them. He's not showing off, but this is how he gets around his awkwardness.

Their son, Jonathan (Anson Boon), is about 16 and just starting to spread his wings. He wants to be an actor, but has never even told his parents about it. He often acts as the audience's eyes and ears.

The other daughter, Anna (Wasikowska), is the black sheep of the family. She's had trouble keeping a job or a relationship, and often drops out of communication for long stretches. Anna shows up with her girlfriend, Chris (Bex Taylor-Klaus), in tow, which causes consternation because Jennifer asked that she not be brought. 

Apparently they've broken up and gotten back together several times, and Chris is seen as a destabilizing force on Anna's life. Though we'll see how true that is.

Finally there's Liz (Lindsay Duncan), Lily's lifelong best friend who has been riding along with the family on vacations, get-togethers, and so on for decades. She doesn't have a lot to say or do, but we suspect she will factor into matters more deeply as things go on.

As I say, there isn't really a whole lot of storytelling here. There's the Friday arrivals, Saturday activities followed by a big dinner, and the Sunday dénouement. At first the main conflict is between the sisters, but it migrates around so that virtually every relationships is revealed and tested in some way.

I'll say I pretty much knew everything that was going to occur before it did. (Watch hundreds of movies a year, and you will, too.) But again, the strength of a film like this is not "what happens" but the how and the why.

Sarandon is such a treasure, always interesting to watch even in movies that don't hold much appeal on their own. I liked seeing Winslet in such an emotionally pinched role; we're used to seeing her as women throwing around big emotions. I really took pleasure in Wilson, so identified with his iconic character from "The Office," getting a chance to show his dramatic chops.

Movies like "Blackbird" are not about big surprises, but how the patterns of life that become stable and familiar are vulnerable to disruption and being upended -- and that's not a bad thing. At the every end of her life, Lily knows who she is and what her life has been about, and wants to say goodbye on her own terms. So do we all.

Video review: "Gifted"

A small film with some huge names attached to it, “Gifted” is a tender little drama about an extended family fighting over the fate of a 7-year-old girl genius. Directed by Marc Webb, best known for the previous two Spider-Man movies, it’s a touch formulaic but well-acted and earnest.

Chris Evans plays Frank, uncle to the girl, Mary (Mckenna Grace), whose mother took her own life some years ago. Now she lives with Frank in a grubby community of rental homes in a part of Florida where the tourists don’t flock. He fixes boat engines for a living, but has his own past that we’ll find out more about down the line.

Octavia Spencer is Roberta, friend a maternal figure to Mary, and Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan) plays Frank’s mother, Mary’s grandmother. She pops up about halfway through the movie to sue him for custody of the girl.

Grandma wants to take Mary to a very specialized educational facility where she can work on big-brain mathematical problems – in particular, one her mother failed to solve. It’s clear Evelyn sees her granddaughter as less a child to nurture than a source of greatness that has gone untapped.

Frank would prefer that Mary stay in a regular school to gain better emotional intelligence and just be a kid. But the movie (screenplay by Tom Flynn) acknowledges that there are flaws in his line of thinking, too. Mary’s own teacher (Jenny Slate) is among those who thinks the girl would be better served in a special setting, even as she tries to resist her own attraction to Frank.

With a little bit each of family melodrama, courtroom intrigue and character study, “Gifted” is a simple movie about some large issues. It may not be the smartest or most original movie around, but it never hits a false moment or fails to engage the heart.

Bonus features are adequate, and are identical for the DVD and Blu-ray editions. These include five deleted scenes, a production gallery of still photos and location footage. There are also five making-of featurettes: “Gifted: A First Look,” “Story,” “An Accomplished Cast,” “Inside the Equation” and “Marc’s Method.”

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Review: "Gifted"

I like it when big stars and high-profile filmmakers do small movies. Almost everybody gets their start making tiny no-budget indies, so it’s nice to see a return to roots. It’s an opportunity for them to stretch their wings and do something a little more daring artistically.

“Gifted” isn’t a terribly audacious movie, but it is a tender and warm-hearted one.

Most people know Chris Evans these days as Captain America, but here he plays Frank Adler, a seemingly hard-headed man who lives in a Florida coastal town with his 7-year-old niece, Mary. Frank fixes boat motors for a living and tools around in a rusted pickup, spending his Friday nights swallowing suds at the local dive bar while a friendly neighbor watches the kid.

He’s one of those guys we pass by in our daily lives, wearing a dirty T-shirt and toiling at a menial job, and we think we know everything there is to know about him.

But Mary is a f’real genius, a first-grader who can do mathematics at a level to stump most doctoral candidates. She’s played by Mckenna Grace, a blonde, gapped-tooth zephyr of pure personality and joy. Mary hasn’t had much chance to socialize with kids her age, but Frank feels it’s important she go to a regular school and live the life of a normal kid.

It doesn’t take long for her sharp 1st grade teacher, Bonnie Stevenson (Jenny Slate), to spot the Einstein in her midst, though. Soon the principal is brought in, experts weigh in with their opinion, which is that Mary should be going to a special school for the gifted. Frank resists.

Things grow more complicated when Mary’s grandmother shows up after a 7-year absence. Evelyn Adler (Lindsay Duncan) is, to use Frank’s words, “very British.” Picture the very epitome of the rich, uptight, smart, snooty English lady who think nothing is ever quite good enough -- that’s Evelyn.

It seems Mary’s mother, who killed herself while Mary was still a baby, was also a math whiz who was on the verge of solving some Very Big and Important Problem. Now Evelyn thinks Mary is the one to carry on her work, and sues Frank -- her son -- for custody.

Unlike other movies of this kind, the court case is not really the center of the movie, which spends very little time in front of the judge. Instead, we drop in there for time to time to hear more testimony, where we learn more about the characters and circumstances. So the judicial proceeding spurs the story rather than carrying it.

I really liked Glenn Plummer as Frank’s attorney, a wise and weary local lawyer who understands that family law is a tricky area where emotions and predispositions can be more important than the law part. Octavia Spencer is in her usual fine form as Roberta, Frank’s neighbor in the squalid little cluster of rental homes where they both live. She’s the super, has helped raise Mary and sees her partially her own.

“Gifted” is an original screenplay by Tom Flynn, who wrote only one other movie about a quarter-century ago. Director Marc Webb helmed the last two “Spider-Man” movies, so like Evans he’s getting back to basics with a small, intimate film like this.

The movie is a little too predictable for its own sake, but the actors embrace the material and imbue their characters with a good deal of emotional truth. Frank is a caretaker, not just for Mary but for his sister’s memory, too. He’s not terribly happy about the burden, but (mostly) carries it without complaint.

Evelyn isn’t an outright villain, and the movie is careful to show how she can give Mary a life that Frank cannot -- one that the girl herself is eager to pursue. Grace’s performance is carefully tuned to demonstrate how an extraordinary mind can exist inside the head of a little girl who still wants to frolic on the beach and play with her one-eyed cat, Fred.

Movies are a lot like kids: you have to let them be what they want to be, rather than what we might wish ourselves. Taken on its own ample merits, “Gifted” makes its own mark.

Video review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I guess I’m just Mr. Contrarian. I despised 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp as a decidedly off-kilter Mad Hatter. But the sequel is a charming romp that uses Lewis Carroll’s second novel as a mere jumping-off point for its own series of crazy, colorful adventures.

Of course, the first movie was a huge hit and the second died a quick death at the box office. Apparently, the majority of moviegoers like what I hate and hate what I like.

(Considering that for my epitaph.)

Perhaps give “Alice Through the Looking Glass” a chance on video, and maybe we’ll find we’re not so far apart after all.

This story (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) digs deeper into the Hatter’s past, using a kooky time-traveling device to see how he became so delightfully dinghy. Three years after the events in the last movie, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Underland to find Hatter has taken deathly ill.

In a delirium -- I know, hard to tell the difference with this one -- Hatter insists that his family, long thought killed by the Jaberwocky, is somehow alive and waiting for him. They track down Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) and steal his Chronosphere to jump back to years past.

Of course, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), she of the outsized head and aggressiveness, returns to muck up their quest. Anne Hathaway also shows up as the White Queen, and we find out a little more about the sisters’ long-ago divergence.

James Bobin, taking over the directing chair from Tim Burton, keeps the story more or less on an even keel. It turns out that when you have characters and creatures straight out of pure imagination, it helps to arrange them in a methodical way, rather than splaying them out randomly as the previous film did.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Bonus features are quite good, though you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version to get the vast majority of them. The DVD comes only with one featurette about the making of the costumes.

The Blu-ray includes several more making-of mini-documenatires, the music video for “Just Like Fire” with P!nk, side-by-side comparisons of raw footage and final scenes, profiles of minor characters, deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary track with Bobin.

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Review: "Alice Through the Looking Glass"

I quite loathed 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but here’s a pretty penny.

This sequel with only a tertiary connection to Lewis Carroll’s second Alice novel manages the rare feat of significantly outshining its predecessor. If the first film was “an exercise in cynical regurgitation,” to quote some meanie critic (*ahem*), then this movie gleefully tosses the books aside for its own freewheeling cogitation on the characters and dizzying world Carroll created.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is, dare I say, an exercise in audacious originality.

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is back while director Tim Burton is not, and it pains me to say that his shifting to a producer role is undoubtedly for the best. Burton has worked with star Johnny Depp so much that he seems to have lost the ability to reign in the actor’s kookiest impulses, ceding the storytelling process to his latest costume-and-accent fetish.

In the last movie, Depp’s Mad Hatter character was a discombobulated mashup of emotions and loony behavior, a coy nincompoop one moment and a sword-wielding war machine the next. Even nonsense needs a consistent sensibility.

James Bobin, an accomplished television writer/director with only one other feature film to his credit (“Muppets Most Wanted”), gets the call and wisely keeps the Hatter in check.

Set three years after the last movie, “Glass” finds Alice (Mia Wasikowska) the captain of her late father’s shop “Wonder,” just returned from a long excursion to the Far East. Alas, upon sailing home to London she finds the family fortune raided by the local lord, whose marital advances she rejected before her deep dive down the rabbit hole into Underland.

Alice rejects the insistence of her mother (Lindsay Duncan) that she must sell the ship and give up her adventures. “I want to believe I can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she stamps.

After stepping through a looking-glass portal, she finds herself returned to Underland just as Hatter has taken ill. He believes that his family, whom he long believed killed by the Jaberwocky serpent at the behest of the evil Red Queen, is waiting to be found. Alice must travel through time to save them.

The only way to do this is by stealing the Chronosphere from Time himself, here represented by Sacha Baron Cohen as a stern-yet-comical figure who oversees the great clock controlling the universe – both Underland and our world. “You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it,” he warns.

Thus sets off a jaunty trip through multiple time frames of Underland, so we get to visit with Hatter, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and their critter friends when they were younger, and then as pups. I should mention that the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with her outsized head and matching rage, returns as well, wooing Time to get her own hands on the Chronosphere.

As before, this is a CGI-heavy romp of bright colors and wondrous backgrounds, somewhere between medieval and Dickensian in setting, pure whimsy in tone. We learn a little more about Hatter – including his real name, Tarrant Hightopp – though not the exact origin of his… specialness.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is an unexpected surprise: a movie you thought you were going to hate that turns out to be quite a gem.

Review: "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

I always thought “Watchmen” was the anti-superhero superhero movie, but this one takes the cake. It’s not so much against superheroes as movies based on their comic books, registering as a spit-flecked denunciation of the way such flicks saturate our culture, almost like a spreading disease that uses up actors’ careers and audiences’ time.

“Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” is an obsidian-black comedy about Riggan Thomson, an over-60 actor who played a costumed hero decades ago and has struggled to do anything equally consequential since. He’s played by Michael Keaton, who knows something about that.

If this sounds like stunt casting, that’s because it is -- but then this whole movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“21 Grams”) is a gimmick, if a very clever one.

Thomson has now sunk most of his heart, soul and bank account into mounting a Broadway production based on the work of short story master Raymond Carver, which he also wrote and is directing.

At one point he finds himself facing off with a hostile New York Times theater critic (Lindsay Duncan), who announces that she’s going to close the play with a vicious review, even though she hasn’t seen it, because she resents Hollywood dilettantes invading her sacred space where real art is made, taking up a theater (the actual St. James) that could be better used for, well, just about anything.

We suspect her lips are channeling the thoughts of Iñárritu, who co-wrote the screenplay (along with three others), and they’re really talking about caped crusader movies.

Keaton is a marvel in this movie, providing an emotionally naked performance as a self-consumed man who has spent so much of his life worrying about being appreciated that he hasn’t ever really inhabited the present tense. Riggan is constantly reminded of this by his estranged daughter, Sam (Emma Thomson), recently graduated from rehab and hired as his assistant -- partly out of a sense of guilt and partly to keep an eye on her for his ex-wife (Amy Ryan).

Iñárritu created the role expressly for Keaton, which was deft, but then unwisely keeps getting in the way of his lead actor.

The director makes all sorts of showy creative choices, like constructing the entire movie out of (seemingly) uninterrupted tracking shots, so we’re constantly shadowing the actors like a ghostly presence. Similarly, the music score (by Antonio Sanchez) is made up almost entirely of percussion instruments, but the disjointed beats bump the movie off its rhythm rather than riding one.

Riggan professes not to think much about being Birdman, but in fact he’s verily haunted by his feathered former alter-ego. The voice of the hero speaks to him (Keaton’s guttural rasp is wonderfully eerie), offering alternate praise and scorn, trying to convince Riggan to give up his ridiculous dream and return to costume work. In private moments when the alter egos are conferring, Riggan performs feats of telekinesis that, even if imagined (?), help buck up his brittle psyche.

The play is teetering on the edge of disaster. Riggan replaces his awful second lead actor, injured during rehearsal, with Mike Shiner, who’s brilliant but notoriously difficult to work with, and he’s played by Edward Norton, who also has a reputation for… but I think you get it now.

Mike is greeted as the production’s rescuer but soon sets about as its chief saboteur, stealing Riggan’s limelight in the press and even stopping a preview performance cold when his (real) gin is confiscated. He’s also the boyfriend of the lead actress, Lesley (Naomi Watts), a bundle of neurotic self-doubt, who recruited him but soon comes to regret it. Meanwhile, Riggan is having an affair with the other, much-younger actress (Andrea Riseborough).

Flitting around the edges of the story is Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan’s lawyer, producing partner and underappreciated fixit man.

The performances are delicious in “Birdman,” particularly Keaton, who will deservedly be the subject of a lot of Academy Awards conversations. I just wish Iñárritu had enough faith in his star to let him shine in the spotlight, instead of constantly distracting us with his showy, look-at-me direction.

Earlier in this review I called the movie clever, and it is that; but it’s the sort of feckless, selfish clever that feels compelled to keep reminding you how clever it is.

Review: "About Time"

Most romantic movies follow a familiar pattern so slavishly their endings seem preordained. The happy couple walks off into the sunset, there is maybe a proposal of marriage, perhaps snapshots of the wedding over the closing credits.

The charming and ambitious “About Time” reaches that point about halfway through, and keeps going. We follow the couple as their journey continues into settled marriage, child birth and rearing, struggles with careers and the loss of older loved ones. The fact it also involves time travel is merely a quirk.

I enjoyed the first part of the film, even as it seemed as if writer/director Richard Curtis was laboring to repeat his success with “Love Actually” from a decade ago. Domhnall Gleeson, son of Brendan and best known as one of the Weasley brothers in the “Harry Potter” movies, plays a typical uptight British romantic leading man, stammering adorably through his misadventures with women.

But just when the movie reached its natural stopping point, it continued onward and found a deeper, richer tale to tell about what it means to be in love. When you’re young and it’s new, love is about the flash and flame of passion. Later on, one must stoke the fire to keep it going, and learn to appreciate the low, slow burn of everyday life.

The story opens with Tim (Gleeson) age 21 and being given the news by his father (a spot-on Bill Nighy): all the men in their family have the ability to travel through time. Simply go into a dark place, clench your fists and think about a point earlier in your life, and you’ll be there.

There are caveats: you can only revisit times and places in your own life -- so Tim can’t, say, decide to take a jaunt with King Tut in prehistoric Egypt. The future’s off-limits, too. Mostly it’s an opportunity to revisit events that didn’t go so well and try again, dad instructs. Tim uses his trial run to return to a New Year’s Eve party where he failed to kiss the slightly awkward girl at midnight, leaving her crushed, and lay on a fantastic smooch.

This sets the stage for the rest of Tim’s time travel: “For me, it was always going to be about love.”

He spends the next hour or so of screen time wooing Mary (Rachel McAdams), a winsome American and fellow Londoner. They share a lovely blind date – literally in the blind; it takes place in a pitch-black restaurant with blind waiters – and hit it off. But Tim must redo the evening to help out a family friend (Tom Hollander) in dire need, and can’t be in two places at once.

First he must track her down, but finds in the week interval she has acquired a boyfriend. He tries again by intervening at the party where they met. He even hits rewind on their first night in bed to upgrade the lovemaking from adequate to epic.

The movie is often raucously humorous – the part where Tim gets to try out various chums as his best man so he can experience how awful their wedding toasts would be is just gut-busting funny.

If this sounds too gimmicky, like a Brit version of “Groundhog Day,” then you’ll be happy to know that Curtis cuts the antics off just before it becomes tedious. Instead Tim must deal with the outlier realities of being able to alter events, including a heartbreaking one involving children.

“About Time” morphs from a frothy romcom into an insightful meditation on life, love and cherishing the immediacy of workaday existence. As time goes on (and backwards, and forwards) Tim finds himself less and less tempted to hop back to put a new spin on things. We also learn poignant things about his father, who mostly used his “extra days” to read books and spend time with his children.

I admit I went into “About Time” expecting little. Instead, I discovered a romantic movie with a mountain of smarts as well as heart. That doesn’t happen too often.