ManWithPez

I was just looking for a picture, damn it! Now I have to go watch it again.

In the very early 80s, if I wanted to watch cable I had to go to my Grandparent’s house in the next county.  From my childhood, I remembered a scene from a movie where Superman and some hot lady were traversing a staircase to rush into each other’s arms.  My much younger self only thought…”BLECH!”.  Now that I’m (a lot) older, it’s the scene that I wait for in Somewhere In Time, the chick flick that all the men secretly like!  I usually try to avoid spoilers, but I’m afraid there are some here, so be warned.

There are several movies that cover the notion that a young man will do something absolutely stupid for a girl.  See Can’t Hardly Wait, Starship Troopers, and Jaws…okay, not that last one.   In keeping with our time travel theme this month, what does Christopher Reeve do for Jane Seymour?  That’s right…he learns how to travel through time!  So he builds this glorious, scientific machine that…Wait.  That’s not what happens at all, and perhaps why this is one of your better movies on the subject.

Richard Collier (Reeve) is a young writer whose career has just taken off.  One night, an old woman turns up and presents him with a pocketwatch and the phrase “Come back to me”.  Richard doesn’t think much of it at the time, and he becomes a bigshot playwrite whose life becomes more than a little empty.  He can’t seem to get his mind off the watch, and one day, decides to take a trip.  He stops randomly at a hotel where he learns of an actress named Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) who died the same night that his first play was produced.  In fact, she was the old woman who gave him the watch he still carries.  The hotel has a picture of her, and Richard becomes obsessed with the actress.  So much so, in fact, that he consults a professor about the possibility of time travel. (But not the possibility of paradox…Where the hell did that watch come from, anyways?)

Here’s one of the tricks of this movie.  After consulting the hotel’s old sign in log, he already knows that he’s been back in time.  So, he becomes convinced that all he needs to do is will himself back.  The professor warns him that should he encounter anything from the modern time period, he will automatically return, and will never be able to go back.  Yeah…way to telegraph, Doc!  It is through sheer act of willpower that Richard goes back in time and finds Elise.  No fancy machines or gadgets.  Of all the time travel movies out there, this is one my favorites for this very conceit.  What is science, really, when a man falls so in love with a woman that he crosses decades to get to her?

Not everything is rosy in the past, however, thanks to Elise’s manager, William Fawcett Robinson (played oh so oily by master thespian Christopher Plummer((I don’t throw that phrase around much…that’s how high I hold Christopher Plummer))) who has warned her that emotional entanglements will ruin her superstar acting career.  The harder he tries to keep the two apart, the harder they try to hookup.  Which they do, of course.  The grand sweeping staircase scene I referred to earlier has to do with Elise waiting for Richard, and his suddenly turning up after Robinson has him beaten up and left in a barn.  Elise and Richard start planning their life together…but not so fast.  You remember the professor telling Richard that if he even laid eyes on something modern, he’d come back?  Well guess what this asshole left in his pocket?  Also, he leaves his pocketwatch behind, so that, when Elise is older, she can give it back to him.  Ergh!  Heartbreak!

Am I the only one who thinks that perhaps Robinson knew more than he was letting on?  He seemed awfully knowlegable about Richard, after all.  Maybe it was just a sly performance and it’s made me paranoid.  Oh shit?  Who’s looking through my window?

I’ll admit that I cry at the movies.  A lot.  I can’t help it.  It’s just the way I’m wired.  This one gets me every time.  To have loved someone so deeply that you cross time itself, and to have it snatched away so horribly.  Ugh.  It’s messing with me even as I write this!  (ThatCostumeGirl thinks it’s funny that this movie affects men in such a way.  Or, at least, me.)  Also…It’s Jane Seymour.  Knowing I’d never tap that again would make cry every goddamn day!

So, check this one out.  It’s got something for everyone.  Hell, my kids even like this one!  Also, you can’t really go wrong with Richard Matheson as your source material.  What’s that?  I Am Legend?  Okay…you can mostly never go wrong with Richard Matheson as your source material.

Tags: Review, Science Fiction

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.