Somewhere in Time: A Movie Rant Review
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| I liked this picture best. Even though it's for the website not the movie. :) |
(Please be warned: this review will be chock-full of spoilers and will be extremely biased. If you are a fan of this movie or want to see it without spoilers, you should probably not read this.)
A few nights ago, we watched Somewhere in Time (1980). To summarize: A playwright (Richard Collier, played bySuperman Christopher Reeve) is approached by an old lady on the opening night of his first play who presses a watch into his hand and says "Come back to me"(It's actually a really creepy part). Fast forward 8 years, he is bored/confused in his life and decides to take a little vacation to relieve stress. He stays at an old hotel where he sees a picture of an actress (Elise McKenna by name), unhealthily begins to obsess over her, and starts on a quest to go back in time to meet her, woo her, etc.
A few nights ago, we watched Somewhere in Time (1980). To summarize: A playwright (Richard Collier, played by
Okay, I want to be fair with this movie. So I'll start with making a list of the things I liked.
1. The costumes. I love all the 1912 apparel – furniture, clothing, everything. It was lovely (except for the lady in corset and stockings).
2. The actors – Richard, Arthur, Elise, and William were all played very well.
3. The soundtrack. The music is really pretty – kind of dreamy and a bit sad and romantic and rainy day-y.
4. The setting. I NEED to go to Mackinac Island. I mean, lovely view, old hotel, romantic connotations and – get this – no cars. What could be better?
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| I just love her hair. |
There was some content – one SKIP AHEAD, SKIP AHEAD bedroom scene and a few choice words from Richard (Superman, how could you?).
There were two major flaws with the movie: the empty promises and the love story. If one of them had been great, I could have forgiven the other one.
To me, a great love story has a specific order: meet, know each other, fall in love, get married, do marriage stuff. I guess these people didn't get the memo because they fell in love, did marriage stuff, decided to get married, and then Elise says, "So tell me about yourself." Seriously. And *MAJOR SPOILERS* in my idea of a great love story they either get together or they are torn apart by some tragically romantic thing like one dying for the other or something, NOT stupidly forgetting that you put the wrong era of money in your pocketses. No, not at all.
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| I did really like this scene. |
As I said, I could have forgiven that! I could have been won over by the music, the beauty, and just imagined that their love story had some substance. But there were so many unfulfilled parts of the movie. Like, how did William predict that "someone would come to change her life"? Does he have magical psychic powers that also allow him to be three seconds behind Elise at all times? Maybe he hypnotized himself so that allowed to see the future (yeah, it would just be him imagining the future, but then again Richard imagined he was in the past and that somehow worked, so anything goes, right?).
The timeline of this movie was so confusing. More so than regular time travel does. Because it was like circle without a beginning. I really think they just didn't think this through. He travels back to see Elise because he traveled back to see her and he gave her a watch which she gave him so he traveled back to see her and give him the watch so that she could give him the watch and he could travel back to see her. Basically the watch doesn't exist. It has no origin. She gave it to him who gave it to her who gave it to him who gave it to her who gave it to him… (My sister theorized that there is a fairy who lives inside the watch and randomly selects people to make miserable.)
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| They could have rewritten it so they stayed together…. :( |
*MORE MAJOR SPOILERS* And then the ending. AGH! Are we to assume he died and the magical cloud land is heaven? Or he's just imagining her? Why can't he just travel back again? Now that he believes he can time travel it should be easier, right? He won't have such a hard time convincing himself (and this time he'll either get a suit that isn't fifteen years old or just not take 1972 pennies with him). And everyone will be happy.
But they don't explain it at all! It's just him sitting there looking as nearly dead as Luke Skywalker after he got his hand cut off (not at all the same as looking completely dead, just mostly dead…). And then they stand there in the mist, looking beautiful and handsome, respectively. And you think they're about to speak or explain. Then the credits start rolling.
I really really really wish this movie was more satisfying. I wish I could have liked it. It has potential – romantic ideas traveling across time to be together, giving up his own time for hers (plus the setting of 1912). Sorry, I can't.
Until yesterday,
