About Time (2013)
Directed by Richard Curtis
No · Ultra Based
How we score movies →Consciousness Markers
The cast is predominantly white with no meaningful racial diversity. While Margot Robbie appears in a supporting role, the film does not foreground or engage with questions of representation.
Female characters exist primarily to support male emotional journeys. Rachel McAdams' role is that of romantic prize rather than agent of her own narrative.
The film is character-driven and emotional rather than preachy, though it does carry implicit messages about appreciating life and family.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or representation present in the narrative. The film is heteronormative throughout.
No engagement with racial themes, racial history, or racial consciousness. The film operates in a racially unmarked space.
No environmental or climate-related themes present in the film.
No critique of capitalism or wealth structures. The film depicts upper-middle-class life without interrogation.
No body positivity themes or representation of diverse body types in meaningful ways.
No representation of neurodivergent characters or engagement with neurodiversity.
No historical revisionism or reframing of historical narratives present.
Synopsis
The night after another unsatisfactory New Year's party, Tim's father tells his son that the men in his family have always had the ability to travel through time. They can't change history, but they can change what happens and has happened in their own lives. Thus begins the start of a lesson in learning to appreciate life itself as it is, as it comes, and most importantly, the people living alongside us.
Why it received this score
Richard Curtis has constructed a film of deliberate emotional earnestness, one that treats the accumulation of ordinary moments with the gravitas typically reserved for grand historical events. "About Time" concerns itself with fathers and sons, romantic entanglement, and the passage of time, operating entirely within the emotional register of upper-middle-class British sentimentality. The time travel conceit functions less as science fiction and more as a narrative device to literalize the male protagonist's desire to optimize his life and relationships, a fantasy that remains fundamentally conservative in its implications. The film's vision of female characters exists primarily to facilitate male self-actualization, whether through romantic partnership or familial support, with Rachel McAdams' role amounting to the prize earned through persistence and charm. The cast is uniformly white, the concerns are parochial and domestic, and the film offers no interrogation of the systems it depicts, only acceptance of them as backdrop. Curtis has made a film about privilege that never questions privilege, about family that never questions family structures, and about time that uses time travel to avoid any meaningful engagement with temporal or social change. This is not progressive cinema. It is cinema that believes everything is already fundamentally alright.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Critic Reviews
“The movie moves episodically, leisurely, through roughly a decade, and that feels like a gift: to nestle in with these extraordinary, ordinary people and get to know them.”
“About Time is ... about time: It asks us to reflect on how we all use that resource, how the hours and minutes that make up a day or a life align with our intentions and values.”
“More than just a time-travel rom-com, this is a movie that asks you questions and doesn’t sugar-coat as many of the answers as you’d expect. Smart and sweet, funny and genuinely moving. Should probably come with a ‘there’s something in my eye’ warning. ”
“About Time, inadvertently, reveals itself to be About Men, and how they devise lies in order to create the illusion that all women supposedly want to see.”