Romance
weary
Hugh Jackman brightens up this mournful escape fantasy
Kate & Leopold
desperately wants to be a screwball comedy but lacks the merry
insouciance to pull it off. Meg Ryan's manic pratfalls can't
wipe away the movie's forlorn heart or disguise its deeply
retro-appeal for women secretly (or not so secretly) longing
for a gentleman gallop in on a white horse and sweep them
off their feet.
This actually happens
in Kate & Leopold, by the way, but as is the case
in so much of the movie the scene is played straight--with
little sense of irony, humor or apparent awareness of the
romantic signifier employed. Director James Mangold, a man
known for somber dramas such as Cop Land and Girl,
Interrupted, clearly lacks the light touch required to
pull off this escape fantasy.
Ryan's played a
zillion of these parts and looks it. Here she's Kate McCay,
a thoroughly modern New York City career gal still smarting
from the breakup of her relationship with her upstairs neighbor
Stuart (Liev Shreiber), a smarmy guy you couldn't see her
with in the first place, but then again, he's a plot device.
Her hair is flat and needs a color touchup, she's way too
thin and her eyes impossibly weary; in short, she looks like
hell. It's hard not to project her highly publicized divorce
and dashed romance with Russell Crowe onto her soul-sick mien.
When Stuart tries
to tell Kate he's found a time portal and inadvertently brought
back a man from 1876, she's exasperated and will have none
of it. Never mind that Duke Leopold (Hugh Jackman, the movie's
saving grace) is wearing breeches and seems confused by his
surroundings. She drags him into the street and eventually
to work, where she pitches him as a margarine spokesman.
Leopold, a bit
of a fish out of water in his own era due to progressive ideas
about class distinctions and technology, readily makes friends
with Kate's brother Charlie (Breckin Meyer), a thespian who
assumes Leopold's acting the part of a nobleman.
This works because Jackman imbues his time traveler with the
right mix of gravity and charm. Courtly without being rigid
or stuffy, Leopold seems real and dreamy at the same time.
Kate predictably
resists Leopold's charms but begins to melt when he rides
in on the aforementioned steed to catch her mugger. Even though
she still doesn't believe he is who he says he is, Kate can't
help falling for him. It doesn't hurt that he compares so
well to her lecherous boss (Bradley Whitford) and Kate clearly
needs to take a break from the rat race.
With time running
out on Leopold's ability to return to the past, the injured
(don't ask) Stuart hurries to get him back to the past so
he can fulfill his destiny. Much of the rest is familiar to
anyone who's watched Back to the Future movies. What's
not quite as standard is the notion an independent woman would
so willingly journey to an era where women were second-class
citizens. Sure, Leopold's appealing but the comment about
the dangers of women wearing trousers should have been a warning
sign of trouble ahead.
His rhapsodies
about the simpler life are appealing in today's fast- paced
world, but is going that far back to the days when women were
little more than chattel really the solution? How about the
1950s or the countryside? Then again, Leopold does have a
title, which fits the Harlequin fantasy for some women.
And Jackman does
cut quite a dashing figure, proving with second romantic comedy
in a year his status as a leading man. Ryan, on the other
hand, could use a break from the rom-com treadmill.
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