Somewhere In Time review by The Grim Ringler
Ya ever do something to be nice; ‘cause a friend asked you to do it and you don’t wanna let them down? You know, watch their dog, water their plants, kill their landlord, paint their cat…watch a really bad movie. I found myself in this predicament this week, when a new friend insisted I had to see SIT as it was he and his wife’s favorite movie. Now I had heard of the film before, and it was show here in the mitten, so I figured I’d give it a whirl.
Wow.
I think I actually felt part of me die as I watched this.
Somewhere In Time finds Christopher Reeve as a young playwright on the verge of stardom. His first play he has written at college is a huge hit and success is just ahead of him. As he is celebrating his hit play though a strange elderly woman makes her way through the throng of admirers and gives the playwright a beautiful gold pocket watch and a note that bids him to return to her. The guy looks quizzically at the woman and her note then goes back to his party and forgets all about her. Several years pass and the playwright, though he has reached a modicum of success, hasn’t found happiness. He is restless. When he leaves the big city of Chicago for a trip to clear his head he happens by a mysterious old hotel and stops for a stay. While there he happens upon the photograph of a beautiful young actress from the early nineteen hundreds who had stayed at the hotel. Drawn to the photo and the woman in it, our hero obsessively find any and all information he can on the woman, going so far as to track down her biographer, who just happens to live nearby as well – how lucky, eh? What he finds out about this woman though is more shocking than anything he could have imagined, as this woman in the photograph is the same woman who gave him the watch and told him to come back to her. But why? Then it occurs to him…were they together before? Was there a before? But how? Seeking out a man who had worked on a theory on how time travel might be achieved, our hero sets out on a quest to find this woman, to find someone he has fallen in love with over an ocean of time, uncertain what might wait for him in the past should he make it.
While watching this movie it was hard to suspend my disbelief. I can dig that this is meant to be a historical romance, sorta like a filmed Harlequin Romance, but man, what happened to making some bloody sense. How is that all this stuff happens to be right in one central location? The hotel, the biographer, the time travel expert? And the way he travels through time is a joke – he closes his eyes and concentrates until he is there. What? If that were the case I’d be having my pudding bath at the Bunny Ranch about now. Then there is the sort of a bad guy that they throw at you who makes NO SENSE. He’s the actress’ manager who warns her of a dark stranger who shall come and try to take her away. But how the hell does he know? They make it sound as if he knew that the guy’d be from the future yet they let that thread go. They create, essentially, a foil to this love that spans time and is destined to be, yet they don’t make him out to be more than a sort of bully that basically is gone as soon as the actress stands up to him. They also make a lot out of the idea that the playwright is trying to do precisely the right things at the right time – basically checking in at a certain time as he had seen in an old check in book that he had been there at such and such time. Yet there is no reason for this. Again, they bring up a point and let it fall. The end comes all of a sudden, out of nowhere, as if they were making the film, realized it was a boring romance and thought – oh, hey, throw in a villain, all good romances need a spoiler. There are so many plot holes that the film, which really does want try hard to succeed, just sinks. Not to mention soulless acting, bland direction, and art direction that could have come from any other movie about the past – they even diffused the light to make it ‘look’ like the past. Ugh.
My biggest problem with the movie, all told, is that it’s just lazy. And yes, it IS a book adaptation so maybe it just came from a mediocre book, but if that was the case then they shoulda strengthened the material. It bothers me that this film got a pass when it came to logic because it was a romance. As if that’s an excuse. Why the hell do most romances have to be dumb? I will give them kudos in that the ending isn’t all sunshine, but it’s so weird and far out that it kills the vibe that had been built. The hell of it is, in all honesty, there is an interesting film here, beneath the lazy story and bad acting. The idea of this old woman coming to a young man, asking him to come back to her, that’s a great launching point, but where the movie goes, where the filmmakers take it, is just a waste.
I know that for many, this is a very sweet, romantic film about true love and love never dying and all that, and fine. If it makes you happy, then I am glad. Lord knows I like a lot of movies I can’t really defend, and I don’t try to. We like what we like. ‘Nuff said. But to me, this is a wasted opportunity to make a sweet, sincere, smart romantic film that deals with some pretty heady issues. Instead you get lots of sap, lots of convenient coincidence, and a Twinkie with no cream in the middle. The romance is boring, the couple connecting with what seems like no chemistry. There is no real danger here, the mean old manager being a red herring. And the ending, which is supposed to warm the heart, only made me angry at the laziness of it all.
This is the reason I hate romances.
…c…
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