I admit to being somewhat disappointed in this movie as I'd had great expectations, considering its cast with three of my favorite stars, Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer. The old fashioned love tale is beautiful, but I felt that the context of time travel should have been managed more skillfully.
The story centers around a Chicago playwright, Richard Collier, who is approached on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him "Come back to me", and presses into his hand a classic pocket watch. Several years later he discovers that this lady is Elise McKenna, a famous stage actress from the early 1900's, whose vintage portrait hangs in the Grand Hotel. Through self hypnosis, he manages to travel back in time to that era, where he meets the beautiful Elise and they fall in love, despite the objections of her manager. Also, despite the difficulties of being separated by almost a century in time.
The actors are all wonderful in their roles, the handsome and charming Christopher Reeve playing Richard, with Jane Seymour as Elise, absolutely beautiful, elegant, and radiant in every scene. Christopher Plummer is cast in the part of the overbearing, overprotective, mean spirited, and possessive manager, William Fawcett Robinson. Though Plummer's role isn't intended to be sympathetic, his acting is of course impeccable, and he's such a favorite of mine that I can never quite picture him as the villain of the piece. Personally...don't get angry with me...but I kind of wished he'd ended up settling down himself with this lovely actress for which he obviously has unrequited feelings.
My main problem lies with the time travel. This is definitely NOT a science fiction movie. While I wouldn't have expected technical scientific methods in a romance movie, surely the screenwriters could have come up with something a bit more believable than this silly self hypnosis. Though I'm quite a romantic myself, this really made the whole plot seem a little foolish. Also, there are just so many loose ends in connecting the 1912 Elise and the late 20th Century Richard. By the end, I wondered whether I had missed something along the way, so was a bit relieved to discover that a few others had the same problem. With such sloppy screen writing, I felt the producers were relying a little too much on the famous name stars and the dramatic High Romance of it all.
It's all pure dreamy romance, fantasy, and fairy tale throughout. Wonderful cinematography, beautiful scenes of Michigan's Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel, and lavish Oscar nominated turn of the century period costumes. If you can just suspend all critical thought processes, you can enjoy this movie as a haunting fairy tale, an escapist romantic fantasy.
The story centers around a Chicago playwright, Richard Collier, who is approached on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him "Come back to me", and presses into his hand a classic pocket watch. Several years later he discovers that this lady is Elise McKenna, a famous stage actress from the early 1900's, whose vintage portrait hangs in the Grand Hotel. Through self hypnosis, he manages to travel back in time to that era, where he meets the beautiful Elise and they fall in love, despite the objections of her manager. Also, despite the difficulties of being separated by almost a century in time.
The actors are all wonderful in their roles, the handsome and charming Christopher Reeve playing Richard, with Jane Seymour as Elise, absolutely beautiful, elegant, and radiant in every scene. Christopher Plummer is cast in the part of the overbearing, overprotective, mean spirited, and possessive manager, William Fawcett Robinson. Though Plummer's role isn't intended to be sympathetic, his acting is of course impeccable, and he's such a favorite of mine that I can never quite picture him as the villain of the piece. Personally...don't get angry with me...but I kind of wished he'd ended up settling down himself with this lovely actress for which he obviously has unrequited feelings.
My main problem lies with the time travel. This is definitely NOT a science fiction movie. While I wouldn't have expected technical scientific methods in a romance movie, surely the screenwriters could have come up with something a bit more believable than this silly self hypnosis. Though I'm quite a romantic myself, this really made the whole plot seem a little foolish. Also, there are just so many loose ends in connecting the 1912 Elise and the late 20th Century Richard. By the end, I wondered whether I had missed something along the way, so was a bit relieved to discover that a few others had the same problem. With such sloppy screen writing, I felt the producers were relying a little too much on the famous name stars and the dramatic High Romance of it all.
It's all pure dreamy romance, fantasy, and fairy tale throughout. Wonderful cinematography, beautiful scenes of Michigan's Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel, and lavish Oscar nominated turn of the century period costumes. If you can just suspend all critical thought processes, you can enjoy this movie as a haunting fairy tale, an escapist romantic fantasy.