About Time · reception & legacy
2013 · Richard Curtis
How About Time has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Critics in 2013 shrugged at it as a soggy, rule-breaking rom-com — the reviews were notably mixed for a Richard Curtis film — but a decade of word-of-mouth has flipped it into a certified comfort-classic and one of the internet's most reliable 'guaranteed cry' movies.
What's debated
Fans endlessly relitigate whether the time-travel logic is a mess that matters or a mess that's beside the point — and whether Tim's do-over courtship of Mary is romantic or quietly creepy.
Its footprint
Its live-each-day-twice philosophy is quoted all over the internet as life advice, and Bill Nighy's dad has become shorthand for the movie-father people wish they had; the film is also famously enormous in South Korea, where it's a perennial rewatch favourite.
Where it stands
On Letterboxd it lives in the comfort-movie canon — the rom-com people admit is really a father-son film, filed under 'cried again, no regrets'.