The Time Traveler's Wife

Warner Home Video
107 Minutes

List Price: $35.99 (Check Price at Amazon.com)

This movie is also available from Amazon on DVD and Video on Demand.

Available 2/9/2010

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Disc Contents

• Upfront Ads
  • Blu-ray Promo (1:43 HD) - skippable
• Movie
• Extras (2ch VC-1 HD)
  • An Unconventional Love Story (25:55)
  • Love Beyond Words (21:06)

About the Movie

Lose yourself in timeless love with this gloriously romantic story of the journey of two hearts. Artist Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams of The Notebook) shares a deep emotional bond with Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana of The Other Boleyn Girl), a handsome librarian who travels involuntarily through time. Knowing they can be separated without warning, Clare and Henry treasure the moments they have together, imbuing them with the yearning and passion of two people imprisoned by time -- and set free by love. Based on the #1 bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife weaves together destiny and devotion, past and future to turn an extraordinary love into an extraordinary love story.

How Does it Look?

I thought the picture quality was quite good. I didn't notice any artifacts that sometimes come from BD-25 discs, where the compression knob can often be turned a little too far in the pursuit of saving space.

Many scenes are night shots, both inside and outside. As he travels in time, Eric Bana visits a variety of locations, and all of them look as they should. I've seen a few other reviews talk about excessive edge enhancement issues, but I didn't notice anything while watching the movie or during rewatching some parts of the movie.

How Does it Sound?

This is a talking kind of movie, so you're not going to get a lot of action out of the surrounds that will bring notice to themselves. However, the car crash scene does have enough impact to make you feel what you're seeing. Voices and music alike are rendered well, and I was never unhappy with the sound quality.

Extras

I like to see the theatrical trailer included with movies, so I was disappointed that none are included here. Being able to watch the trailer helps one to appreciate how the movie was marketed during its theatrical release, and it's unfortunate when such a simple and obvious extra is not included.

An Unconventional Love Story allows the cast to talk about the romance between the two primary characters. Fans of the book and the movie will probably hang on every word, but I found the second extra more interesting to watch. Love Beyond Words explores the challenges that the cast and crew faced in making the movie considering the popular following the book achieved, and that certain conventions used in the book wouldn't work when making an effective movie. This should be required watching for everyone who wants their favorite book to be slavishly made into a movie, with no changes whatsoever. It offers the best explanation I've seen yet as to why such an approach doesn't work.

Digital Copy

There is a second disc which contains a Digital Copy. Fans of the movie might enjoy the digital copy, as it would allow you to download the movie and enjoy it many times on your portable device. By inserting the disc into a Windows PC or Mac, you can obtain a digital copy of the movie for playback on your PSP, PC, Mac, or iPod. I didn't explore this option, so I can't comment on the picture or sound quality. The documentation says that the Digital Copy must be redeemed by 2/8/2011.

Other Aspects

This disc is BD-MV formatted, and as such, our PlayStation 3 was able to support auto-resuming the movie, even after the disc is ejected. Most current Blu-ray players will be able to do so as well, as did the Oppo BD-83 that we had in for review. Resuming playback is one of the biggest usability problems with the Blu-ray format that studios need to recognize and support, so it's good to see more studios making this possible, either through the format they use (BDMV) or through programming (BD-J). Bookmarking is not supported.

Conclusion

Those looking for a romance are going to like to have this around for repeat viewings. Even though the extras are interesting to watch the first time around, after those 47 minutes are spent, you're unlikely to watch them again.

Given that this is a movie that people may want to return to once in a while, the fact that a digital copy is included makes sense. This adds to the value of the package for such people, so if you count yourself among them, keep that under consideration when thinking about whether to buy or rent this title.

If you don't have every word of the book memorized, and you're just looking for a good date-night movie (even if the date is a pint of ice cream and a warm quilt), this is well worth renting.

One final thought: We're several years into the Blu-ray release market, and we're still having to put up with up-front Blu-ray promotional video clips. These have always been odd, considering if you've purchased the Blu-ray copy of the movie, aren't you aware of the fact that Blu-ray is better than DVD? Let's end these senseless promos, OK?

Recommended Reading

Don't just take our word for it, check out these resources for more reviews of the movie and of the disc.

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• Blu-ray Reviews
  • Brian Orndorf of DVD Talk
  • John J. Puccio of DVDTown
  • Aaron Peck of High-Def Digest

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A copy of this title was provided at no cost by the movie studio/distributor for the purpose of this review. No expectation of the results of this review were set as a condition of receiving the item.