TIME AFTER TIME a film review by Chris Casino
Time After Time **** (excellent)
Writer/Director: Nicolas Meyer, Cast: Malcolm McDowell (H.G. Wells), David Warner (John Leslie Stevenson), Mary Steenburgen (Amy Robbins).
The movie deals with H.G. Wells, a newspaper columnist in Victorian England, who sees the future as a utopia, where science has solved all our problems, inventing a time machine that his friend John Leslie Stevenson (who is later revealed as the mysterious man who's been killing all these prostitutes, Jack the Ripper) has stolen and used to travel to 1979. Being that Wells doesn't want Stevenson wreaking havoc on 'utopia', he uses the time machine to follow him, and discovers that 1979 is anything but the utopia he envisioned before. But he does find out that women have become more liberated, which is something else he'd always hoped for, and he discovers this in Amy Robbins from 1979 San Francisco (an irritating Mary Steenburgen).
With a plot like that, anybody'd really expect it to be excellent, and if it isn't, there's something wrong with Nicolas Meyer. Thankfully, there's nothing wrong with Nicolas Meyer. It's very well done, McDowell is great as Wells, the film moves along as you'd expect it, and all in all, it's an excellent film.
Wells is also very well portrayed in the film, too. H.G. Wells was a man who didn't believe in religion, believed in women's lib, and believed that science would take care of us. Besides that, he had a very cynical attitude towards a lot of things, and Nicolas Meyer has written all of this into his character. He obviously studied Wells, which is very wise, I think.
The only problem is Mary Steenburgen as Amy Robbins. It's partially her irritating performance, but it's mostly do to her poor character design. She's supposed to be so liberated, but she never knows what to do once she's finally convinced that Wells is telling her the truth.
If you can look past that, try the movie out. It's very entertaining, so I tell you, grab a bucket of popcorn, a glass of soda, and enjoy H.G. Wells' amusing attempts to catch Jack the Ripper and save utopia. If you're looking for a good time travel film, you couldn't do much better. I'd advise would-be filmmakers,"Take a lesson from this flick, folks. This is how you make a sci-fi movie."
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