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Sometimes the best sci-fi stories hinge on how they use their central premise. How they use it as a metaphor for common experiences, which puts those experiences into a new focus. Director Robert Schwentke’s adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s popular novel does just that. Having not read the book, I must compliment screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin for taking what Niffenegger created and bringing it to the screen in a fascinating way. The sign of a good adaptation is making the audience want to read the score material. THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE will be the next book I buy.

Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana, HULK) has a genetic disorder where he randomly travels through time. Where he ends up and how long he is gone is never the same. The first time he traveled was when he was six — the day his mother Annette (Michelle Nolden, TV’s NUMB3RS) died. Growing up, he was very lonely with his father Richard (Arliss Howard, AMISTAD) sinking into alcoholism. Then Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams, THE NOTEBOOK) walks into the library where he works and looks at him like she’s been reunited with her long lost husband. Turns out he’s been visiting her since she was a child.

The premise works in stages, twisting the typical elements of a melodrama. Clare has grown up with Henry in her mind as the perfect man and has been waiting for them to meet when he isn’t time traveling. Her head-first passion for the relationship and his reluctance to jump right in mirrors the typical feelings of women and men going into any relationship, only on a grander scale. After their wedding, Henry’s travels through time are trying for Clare, especially when he misses big events. It’s a perfect twist on the workaholic husband — there are a lot of negative elements to the situation, but there are benefits as well. Later tragedies in the story are similar in feel to those of many melodramas, but the sci-fi twist puts them in a refreshing perspective.

In the film, Henry and Clare are relatively thin characters. Schwentke relies a great deal on the talents of his actors to make them sing. Bana gives Henry a kind, but lonely feel. His condition has kept him isolated from the world. But he feels safe with Clare, who knows him better than he knows himself, because his older self taught her everything he knows about himself. If that sentence was hard to get your mind around, it’s much like that for the characters (and the audience) at times. McAdams makes Clare a hopeless romantic who has been longing to finally meet her Mr. Right, but she has to come to terms with the fact that the fantasy isn’t like reality. McAdams is of course effervescent on the screen as always.

The story has a great deal of fun with the premise at times too. Clare and Henry’s wedding in particular is unique. And there was that time when Clare meets up with the younger Henry after she has a fight with the older one. For all the funny irony the film taps into; it does the same with dark irony as well. Many of the film’s tragedies are a result of the twisted luck of Henry’s condition. While watching the film, I was reminded of Woody Allen’s THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, a film completely different in tone, but one that took a wild premise and milked it for everything it had.

The premise is so entertaining I forgave the film for playing with my emotions and not diving deeper into its characters. In the end, I came to care for Henry and Clare, and sympathized with their crazy situation. In their unique challenges, we can see the universal humanity of their struggles. They just want to do right toward each other, even when it hurts. This bittersweet romance is at times whimsical and then heartbreaking. That’s true of life in general whether you have normal problems or if you often end up naked in a strange place and your loved ones don’t see you for weeks. And this happens to Henry… and he even gave up drinking.