In many ways, it is the ultimate romance time travel story since it combines the circular plot idea (the old woman comes to see him--he goes back--to meet the woman--who will grow old and come to see him--) with star-crossed lovers. It also uses one of my favorite ideas: that researching a time period may not be enough to get facts correct (Richard is complimented by an older lady in the past for wearing his grandfather's suit).
And so on and so forth.
But it isn't one of my favorite movies and not due to the unhappy ending. It seems a lot of effort to...end up where they started.
Generally speaking, I think the time travel-love story always has this problem. I quite like The Lakehouse--in part because the issue isn't IF the couple will get together but WHEN (they meet prior to the final meeting).
The Time Traveler's Wife accomplishes the same feat of ignoring IF for HOW. The couple have already met and married. The focus is Henry's wife's adjustment to her lover, a man who is in the process of maturing when she meets him chronologically rather than the mature man she met when she was younger.
IF can be interesting--and is extremely well-tackled in Star Trek Voyager's "Year of Hell" 2-parter, in which a man keeps trying to get back the wife he lost--but there isn't much else to do apart from the "if." Stargate tackled the idea of "if" for one episode. It doesn't need much more time than that.
Generally speaking with time travel plots, someone else's problems are better plot fodder, as in Quantum Leap and Back to the Future, rather than the protagonist's personal romance.
Even Sam Beckett, ultimately, remains unattached.
