Posted: 01/01/2002

Kate & Leopold

(2001)

by Hank Yuloff

What I am about to write should in no way be taken as a personal attack on one of my all time crushes, Meg Ryan. She is still right there on the top level of my “Total Babes” list and after reading in a recent interview that even though she is single, no one is asking her out, let me begin by offering my services as a dinner companion or any other event for which she needs an escort.

That being said, let me talk about her latest movie, Kate & Leopold, a complete rental of a movie. Kate & Leopold is another in a long line of Ryan flicks where she plays the honey of a girl who never seems to find the right guy and by the time we get to the end, her immediate circle of friends and loved ones has pushed her in the right direction to find love. I do not mind watching her in these roles, but on the “Classics Meter,” Kate & Leopold comes nowhere close to When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, or even City of Angels.

Instead of a driving companion, business competitor, geographically undesirable or an angel, Ryan’s true love this time comes not from across the country but from a different part of the time/space continuum. In what is never really explained very scientifically or otherwise, Kate’s ex-boyfriend Stuart (Liev Schreiber from Jakob the Liar, Twilight and HBO’s RKO 281), figures out there is a rift in that continuum that happens to be next to the East River bridge in his home city of New York. He goes through the rift, arouses Leopold’s (Hugh Jackman) suspicions, and can’t get away fast enough to not be followed back to current times. From there it is only a short jump for Leopold to meet Stuart’s old girlfriend, Kate, who lives downstairs.

How convenient is all that? The whole world, nay, the whole UNIVERSE can have a hole between two times and there it is, right near the guy who knows it exists. And the woman who is to be the love of Leopold’ life is connected to Stuart. It reminded me of the train wreck in Unbreakable having the right, unbreakable guy on it just coincidentally living in Samuel Jackson’s home city.

Along those lines, there are some other problems with this movie which made the 121 minute run time seem a lot longer. I hate being in the movie theater watching a flick only to have my concentration on the story broken up by some stupid mistake of continuity or bad story writing. Kate & Leopold is full of them. Here are just three examples: Kate goes out to a 7:00 dinner with her boss, J.J. (Bradley Whitford from West Wing). An hour or so later her brother Charlie and Leopold go out to a bar and then begin heading home at the strike of midnight. They decide to pop into the restaurant to check on the progress of Kate and J.J. Instead of concentrating on the continuation of the story, I found myself thinking, “A FIVE hour dinner for two? Who goes out to dinner for 5 hours without the wait staff begging to move you to the bar?” Next, Leopold is wooing Kate by setting up a candlelight dinner on the roof of her apartment building complete with a violin player he hires off the street. “OK,” I continued my running commentary to myself, “This guy just arrived from the 19th century. Where is he getting the money for all this stuff? Not from Kate’s brother; he’s an out of work actor.”

And, speaking of the brother; Charlie has a crush on a woman he knows because they are both regulars at the forementioned bar. When Leopold gets her phone number for him, Charlie’s next step is to have flowers delivered. One more conversation in my head: “He just got her phone number and has not called her. Where did he get her address to have the flowers delivered?”

As a side light, there are a lot of references to midnight and things changing at the stroke of midnight. This seems to be some kind of Cinderella reference, but it was never explained and only caused another conversation to go on inside my head, taking away from my enjoyment of Meg Ryan on screen.

Directed by James Mangold and produced by Kathy Conrad (photo at left), Kate & Leopold is a movie that, if you like watching Ryan, or are an incurable romantic, will make for a great rental on some Saturday night when you don’t have a date and want to order a pizza and enjoy a cute, non-demanding love story. Ryan, who is on my aforementioned Total Babe list, is always worth watching, and the supporting group, including Jackman, has some good performances. Meyer is very funny as the non-working actor and Natasha Lyonne (But I’m a Cheerleader and American Pie) playing Ryan’s secretary are especially bright spots.

Hank Yuloff is living in Los Angeles, the same city as Meg Ryan, which would make it very easy for him to pick her up if she called and wanted to go out on a date.

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