|
R2 DVD Reviews
|
|
Tuesday, 19 July 2011 00:00 |
 As you might guess from the title - or the part in brackets, at least - Time Traveller is loosely based on the same story that originally spawned the Girl Who Leapt Through Time animated movie. Don't expect much in the way of similarities, though...
When her mother Kazuko is left comatose after a car accident, high-schooler Akari Yoshiyama uses her mother's research into time travel to journey back from 2010 to the 1970's. Akari believes that if she can bring her mother's first love back from the past, that he will be able to bring Kazuko back to consciousness and reunite mother and daughter. But as Akari finds herself falling for a young man that she meets in the past her future starts to become uncertain...
I have to admit, I went into watching Time Traveller expecting something very different, a more direct adaptation of the same story that led to the animated version of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Time Traveller, though, takes only the very core idea and name from the original, and runs with its own characters and story to create something very different - although in its own way, every bit as enjoyable.
Akari's journey to the past is facilitated through a little vial of time-travel potion that her scientist mother had been working on, as a little side-protect to her real work - a project that had been inspired by a chance meeting many years earlier. After Kazuko's accident, it's the inspiration for that work - Kazuo - who Akari sets out to find, and off to the past she goes, courtesy of her mother's potion. Once back in 1974, though, her search takes second-place almost to her growing relationship with Ryota, a college student & film maker who is the first person she meets when she lands with a bump at the end of her journey.
Which brings us to what this movie really is, under the surface: a twin-track love story, on one level about the love between Kazuo and Kazuko and the reason for their separation (which is somewhat more complex than what Akari believed it to be - Kazuo inspired Kazuko to research time travel for a reason), and between Akari and Ryota. The time-travel is almost an incidental thing, to be forgotten about as Akari gets on with other things, with only the date setting giving the game away.
I also have to say that there are certain similarities to a certain time-travel movie: Back to the Future. The point of comparison is fairly clear: their humourous look at what happens when your trip to the past starts messing with potential futures, and how should you act when you know things that you shouldn't. There are far worse movies to be compared to, and Time Traveller comes out of the comparison fairly well - if Akari only had a deLorean, she'd be all set (a far classier mode of time travel than magical potion, I have to say).
Time Traveller lacks the humour of its spiritual stablemate, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and for me at least also suffers a it by simply being live-action - while I love Japanese animation, there's something about the style of the typical Japanese live-action production that doesn't quite work from me, although I'm not quite sure what it is (and no, it's not that I'm just too used to 2D waifus now, thank you). Still, this managed to keep me well-entertained for its full length, even though it sometimes meandered off in directions that it didn't need to, or spent too long on some scenes. Akari and Ryota, as leads, make a good enough pairing that just watching them get on with their lives (in their slightly dysfunctional way) made for good entertainment on its own, with Akari's search for Kazuo and the revelations that eventually come about from that being the icing on the cake.
In short, I liked it, and I wasn't really expecting to when I started. Touching & moving in places, sweet and mildly funny in others, it's just a good slice-of-life story in rather unusual circumstances, and if that's how you treat it then it works really well. A good piece of entertainment.
|
Reviews Archive 
