B+
By any reasonable standard “Kate and Leopold” should be a disaster. Its basic storyline–involving a guy and a girl from different historical epochs who fall madly (and impossibly) in love–has been a mainstay of bad fantasies (see 1980’s sodden “Somewhere in Time” for a perfect example). When poorly treated, such tales can be positively creepy. On rare occasions, however, the idea can be made to work wonderfully. “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947) is probably the best of the lot, but “Portrait of Jennie” (1948), despite its innate silliness, is fairly successful, too. (Hardly surprising that both pictures about how love can overcome death come from the years immediately following the war in which so many husbands and fiances had been lost.) James Mangold’s romantic comedy, more lighthearted than either of them, isn’t their equal, but it’s winning fluff, easy to take and easy to like–the rare example of its genre that’s genuinely enjoyable.
The romantic time jumper in this case isn’t a spirit, but Leopold, a penurious English duke from 1876 who–on the very night that, at his uncle’s insistence, he’s being forced to choose a bride–accidentally stumbles through a portal while chasing suspicious Stuart (Liev Schreiber), a nutty scientist, who’s on his way back to the present. After some perfunctory sequences showing Leopold’s bewilderment at being in a really new world, romance kicks in with the introduction of Kate (Meg Ryan), a hard-driving ad agency exec who’d previously been Stuart’s girlfriend. When Stuart is hospitalized (he’s injured falling down an elevator shaft–it seems that Leopold was to be the inventor of the lift, and his removal to the future has affected the present), Leopold gets ever friendlier with Kate, who lives on the floor upstairs and frequently visits via the fire escape, and with her brother, a would-be actor named Charlie (Breckin Meyer). His chivalric charm gradually wins over the woman, who initially thinks he’s just a typical New York oddball; he persuades her that she’s not doomed to be unlucky in love and should expect more from a man than what’s being offered by her smirking lout of a boss (Bradley Whitford, from “The West Wing”), from whom she’s hoping for a promotion. Leopold also has a salutary effect on Charlie, whom he tutors in the art of treating women with old-style grace. Kate, in turn, introduces Leopold to the wonderful world of advertising by selecting him as the commercial spokesman for a butter substitute that he’s happy to sing the praises of–until he tastes it. Of course, the budding romance between the duke and the modern woman is threatened by the necessity that he return to his own time.
On paper all this sounds pretty lame, and in lesser hands it would be. But Ryan does her frazzled, cute-as-a-button shtick so well that she’s endearing rather than irritating, and Jackman, after flailing about as Ashley Judd’s destined fellow in the dreary “Someone Like You,” proves a terrifically engaging partner, oozing all the gentlemanly qualities that make girls swoon. The supporting players are winners, too. Meyer, who was flat in “Rat Race” and is currently suffering through a term in a crummy sitcom (“Inside Schwartz”), is wonderfully adept in a role that could easily have been annoying, and Schreiber is, as usual, broad but mostly funny as Stuart. Even Whitford is better than the by-the-numbers part of the caddish boss would suggest. One will glimpse such able farceurs as Paxton Whitehead, Spalding Gray and Philip Bosco in small roles; it’s a pity they couldn’t be given more to do, but the leads are so pleasant that you won’t mind overmuch.
Of course the best cast couldn’t save poor material (just check out Ryan floundering in “Addicted to Love” or “Prelude to a Kiss,” or Jackman in the aforementioned “Someone Like You”), but Mangold and Steven Rogers manage to invest their musty premise with a good deal of charm; a story about a romance that’s basically founded on the attractiveness of good manners, moreover, seems especially appropriate in an era when inconsiderate boors think nothing of inflicting their incessant cell-phone jabbering on others in malls, grocery stores, and–worst of all–movie auditoriums while the picture is showing. Mangold’s light-handed direction, moreover, makes the script feel fresher than it actually is (although, to be sure, he includes far too many sequences involving one of those supposedly lovable dogs that cause all sorts of humorous mayhem and then gaze longingly into the camera). Mangold also does a nifty cameo near the beginning of the picture, playing–quite appropriately–a young director who accuses Kate, whom he overhears making some suggestions after a preview of his new picture, of “sucking the life out of American cinema.” Technically the picture is first-class down the line, and there’s a pleasant background score from Rolfe Kent, director Alexander Payne’s house composer.
In fact, there’s only one big problem with “Kate and Leopold”–it makes blatant historical mistakes. The hero is supposed to have arrived from the New York of 1876, but important plot turns not only have him claiming to have attended a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” (which didn’t premiere in London until 1879) but rhapsodizing at length about Puccini’s “La boheme” (which was first performed in 1896). Either this fellow has been bouncing around in time a lot more than the script reveals, or writers Mangold and Rogers haven’t done their basic homework, or–even worse–they’re aware of the blunders but don’t think them significant, believing that the audience is either too dense to recognize them or too nonchalant to care. That’s a mistake, because though it might seem like nitpicking to mention such errors, the success of a fantasy really depends on a willing suspension of disbelief, something that’s abruptly threatened when gaffes like these occur (even if relatively few viewers will notice them). Happily, the leads are good enough, and the direction sufficiently sprightly, that the difficulty isn’t fatal in this instance. “Kate and Leopold” is no classic, but it’s a pleasantly unassuming piece of holiday cheer.
News Flash: At the last minute, Mangold has decided to do a bit of trimming on the picture, removing a brief shot toward the beginning that indicated what the denouement would be and, more significantly, excising several references to a familial relationship between Leopold and Stuart. The changes, which probably explain why the release date was postponed from December 21 to Christmas Day, weren’t made early enough for critics to screen the final version, but based on a viewing of the original cut, they seem at least to this reviewer to be well-founded (indeed, Stuart’s being a descendent of Leopold’s had some disconcerting ramifications). There’s a rumor that as part of the shortening, thought was giving to trimming the title as well, to “Kate and Leo.” But somebody pointed out that under that name, the film could be mistaken for a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of “Titanic.” Ho, ho, ho.