As far as Hollywood’s concerned, science fiction just means a fancy way to make things explode. The only real exception to this rule is time travel films. They involve a slightly more mature form of wish-fulfillment – rather than wishing you could make your boss explode with your mind, you wish you could go back in time and change things so you didn’t have to make your boss explode – and so more often than not they turn out to be love stories.

Even the first Terminator film had a man travelling across time to be with the woman he loved, and the similarities with The Time Traveler’s Wife don’t end there. In fact, whenever Henry (Eric Bana) travels through time and doesn’t end up seeing Claire (Rachael McAdams), he pretty much relives the time travel arrival from the first Terminator film: he arrives naked, has to steal clothes, and usually gets chased by the police. But mostly he does see Claire, because ever since he first travelled through time as a child to escape the car crash that killed his mother he tends to return to the same places over and over again.

This is a time travel story, so untangling exactly why he starts turning up in Claire’s very large back yard when she’s still a child and he’s in his 30s is a little tricky. Suffice to say that his future selves have been appearing to her for most of her life by the time he meets her for the first time in his life, and as his future selves have done a pretty good job of laying the groundwork for him their relationship hits the ground running. Unfortunately for Claire, Henry can’t control when he travels, where he’ll go or for how long he’ll be gone - but on the up side, sometimes he returns from the future with next week’s lotto numbers.

Events do get increasingly complicated, but the emotional development of the characters is never confusing so the story itself is easy to follow. And there’s not really all that much to it: a couple meet, fall in love, get married, want to have children (which proves difficult, as they seem to have inherited his time travelling gene), and eventually have to face the looming fact of death. Where this works is in using time travel as a way to explore this familiar story from a slightly different angle, making the tired emotions they stir seem fresh and new.

McAdams is good as a woman crazy in love for much of the film, but Bana really shines as a sad, wounded man who’s constantly haunted by either his past or what he knows is coming and yet still completely believable as a loving husband and father. At times it’s a bit of a weepie, but it never feels cheap; if there’s such a thing as the thinking person’s tear-jerker, this is it.

The Time Traveller's Wife opens in cinemas on Thursday, November 5.
You can view the trailer for The Time Traveller's Wife here on TheVine.