ManWithPez

I know what he looks like. He's still a badass!

The premise is simple (mostly).  HG Wells builds a working time machine.  Unknown to him, one of his dinner buddies is actually Jack the Ripper, who steals his machine.  Unfortunately for Jack, the machine has an automatic return function (NEAT!), and so, HG Wells tracks down Jack the Ripper in modern times in order to bring him to justice.  How’s that sound to you?  Cause it sounds absolutely awesome to me!  And it has ever since I was taken as a small child to see Time After Time.

With a premise like “HG Wells vs Jack the Ripper”, you’d expect something sensationalistic and over the top…but, that’s not what you get here.  Oddly enough, what the movie really appears to be about is fitting in the time you live in, or not.  John Leslie Stevenson (played by one of the finest actors ever, David Warner) is a doctor who has a penchant for hacking on prostitutes.  You know, in almost any portrayal of Jack the Ripper, it would seem that the movies want you to think that he’s an inhuman monster, when Time After Time has got the real deal figured out.  It’s much more frightening, I think, when Jack the Ripper is humanized.  You’d expect the Ripper killings from a monster…not an ordinary man. 

HG Wells here (Malcolm McDowell…oh yeah.) is a visionary.  Frankly I’d expect nothing less.  What surprised me about this movie so much was that when Stevenson comes to the modern world, he becomes even harder to track down.  He fits in, he disappears.  HG Wells tracks him down by focusing on just what would make him different in the modern times.  He’s actually a very successful detective in this movie.  You can tell from his ugly as sin deerstalker cap.  There’s also a love interest (HEY!  Jack the Ripper’s milling about!  There’s no time for love, Dr. Jones!) named Amy (HG Wells’s companion in real life, by the way) played by former hot nerd crush Mary Steenburgen in only her second film.  While their relationship is actually very sweet and unobtrusive, it does telegraph just who one of Jack’s victims might be.

I’ve no complaints with any of the acting in this movie, or the writing, or the editing.  There is one small thing, however.  It’s got a goddamn Corey in it!  That’s right…Corey Feldman is in the film near the beginning.  Looking for all the world like the mischievious little bastard he was in that shit McDonald’s commercial!  I’m kidding.  I think he has a three word line.  But seriously.  There’s a Corey.

Well written, a little dated (Jack stalks a disco…an honest to God disco…sigh.) and with no basis in fact whatsoever, I find this movie to be utterly entertaining, and I never miss a chance to watch it.  In fact, I think I’ll do that right now.  That is, if I can find a time machine that runs on friction (!?) with the deus ex machina of a return key!  Beautiful film that makes a strange kind of sense.  Where else would Jack the Ripper have escaped to?  Why through time, of course!

Tags: Review, Science Fiction

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 11:04 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.