The best thing about The Time Traveler's Wife is that whenever Henry (Eric Bana) travels to a new time, WHABAM. There is his ass. He can't take his clothes with him when he travels, and it is fantastic. If they would only cut the plot—girl marries guy who time-travels uncontrollably, dramatic shenanigans ensue, yada yada—and change the title to Eric Bana Doesn't Even Try to Act Because He Is Too Busy Trying to Find Some Clothes, I would approve of this movie wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, Bana does try to act, and it doesn't work. For most of the movie, he is either completely wooden or unconvincingly thrilled. Or awkward. On a couple of his time travels he meets his wife, Clare (Rachel McAdams), when she is 6, and the encounters are just as weird as they sound. He knows the 6-year-old will have sex with him... but in the future! And they're going to get married, so it's okay! He's not a pedophile AT ALL, if you think about it, and that's exactly the problem. I had to think a lot about Henry—whether he was creepy, whether it was believable that Clare was so into him, whether he would make a facial expression anytime soon, etc.—and it was distracting.

McAdams's charisma almost saves the movie, though; Clare's struggle to make her marriage work in spite of her husband's irrepressible time-traveling is moving. McAdams is also surprisingly funny—when Henry shows up at their wedding 10 years older than he was the day before, her "What the hell?" makes the scene. But she can't carry a whole sci-fi romance herself, even with the help of picturesque scenery and Bana's butt.