Kate & Leopold

Rating

Director

James Mangold

Screenplay

James Mangold, Steven Rogers

Length

1h 58m

Starring

Meg Ryan, Hugh Jackman, Live Schreiber, Breckin Meyer, Natasha Lyonne, Bradley Whitford, Paxton Whitehead, Spalding Gray

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
What if a fissure in time allowed you to visit an era over 100 years in the past? Would you take that leap into adventure and risk altering time? Kate and Leopold takes that quandary and applies it both literally and figuratively.

The film opens in 1876 where a young inventor, Leopold, Duke of Albany (Hugh Jackman) is attending the erection of the first support tower for New York City’s Brooklyn Bridge. Also in the crowd is a traveler from the future, Stuart Besser (Liev Schreiber), who has decided to take photos of events in the past in order to prove that he has found a crack in the time continuum. After Besser crashes a ball at which Leopold is to choose a wife, the young inventor pursues the time traveler through the streets of 19th century New York. The two are accidentally thrust forward into the 21st century, where the real ‘fish out of water’ story begins.

Meg Ryan plays Besser’s ex-girlfriend, Kate, who is employed by a New York advertising agency. She works under J.J. Camden (Bradley Whitford), who wants a romantic relationship with her. Kate’s main inclination is to launch into one, just to get the job promotion she’s been after, but her subconscious is telling her not to do it. Meeting the charming Leopold sparks a romantic relationship that crosses the borders of time.

Ryan is a staple of the romantic comedy genre for a reason. She is charming, funny and knows how to make an audience fall for her character. The only problem with this is that nearly every character she plays is virtually the same as the others. Jackman, on the other hand, who got his start playing the violent Wolverine in X-Men, shows us his softer side. His natural accent helps accustom the audience to his charm and his good looks keep them interested.

This movie’s plot must be divided into its core components to be accurately analyzed. On one side, you have the romantic comedy – an indispensable part of filmmaking. This part of the story is pretty standard and doesn’t further the genre in any way. The other side of this movie is its science fiction element. This revolves around the time warp that brings Leopold into the future. For the most part, it’s carried off well, allowing for brief examples of how elevators don’t quite work now that their inventor – Leopold – has been brought to the present and is therefore unavailable in the 19th century to come up with that creation. Unfortunately, certain aspects of the story require a return to that earlier time period. If history wasn’t to be changed, but the modern day characters were actively involved in it, then the whole concept of an affected future is inaccurate.

Kate and Leopold has no spectacular special effects and is limited in art direction and costume design. Otherwise, the critical elements of the film lie in the acting and screenplay. Director James Mangold, who co-wrote the screenplay with Steven Rogers, does his best with his own creation and succeeds in crafting a worthy motion picture. The minor plot errors don’t adversely affect the film, especially when you consider that the target audience is watching more for the romantic aspect rather than the science-fiction aspect.

Review Written

July 16, 2002