Yesterday, one of the errands I managed to squeeze in between the raindrops, was my weekly drop off of due materials & pickup of requested items at the local library. One of the items that was on hold for me was a recent DVD re-release of the movie Time After Time. I had seen the movie only once on broadcast television sometime in the early 80’s – CBS I believe – but I couldn’t remember a thing about it. It was, of course, broken up by several commercial breaks over a two hour time span, but I seemed to recall really liking the movie. So when I saw it was listed as part of the library items on order I reacted to this fact from my memory and placed a request for it, looking forward to catching up with it once again.
I just finished watching it and I must say my tastes have changed considerably. The idea of placing H.G. Welles and Jack the Ripper into the same story is a first-rate idea, with plenty of possibilities. There are several story layers here trying to converge into a great film, but it simply just doesn’t work. And the number of plot holes the story introduces are huge enough for a fleet of Peterbilts to drive through. Someone clearly wasn’t paying attention when they wrote it – or has a mild contempt for their target audience.
Storyline: In the early 1890’s H.G. Welles (Malcolm McDowell) is at home entertaining a close knit group of his gentlemen friends, one of which is John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner), who unbeknown to everyone is the infamous Jack The Ripper. Welles takes the group to his basement where he entrusts them with a secret – he has invented a machine which will transport him back & forth in time. Several minutes later, while the group is debating the merits of Welles invention, two inspectors from Scotland Yard pay a visit. They are searching houses for Jack The Ripper who has just claimed another victim. During the search one of the policemen recovers a doctors bag with incriminating evidence. They also discover that the doctor, John Leslie Stevenson, has vanished without a trace. Later that evening Welles realizes that Stevenson has used his time machine invention to escape. Welles uses the same invention to follow his friend into the future where he ‘disappeared’, find him and return him to England to face justice.
For a movie designed as a chase thriller there’s precious little chasing that happens. The opening of the film establishes that Welles and Stevenson are geniuses, yet there’s no witty dialogue or clever & elaborate traps, rescues or escapes. Instead the film wastes far too much time on a clumsy and ‘cute’ romance between Welles and the foreign currency exchange clerk he meets at a local bank, Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen). Some of the dialogue for their scenes is excruciating to get through – it’s embarrassingly and badly dated. It was obviously designed to be a comment on the differences between the era of the century of Welles’ existence (late 19th century) and a somewhat concise survey of the (then) present times. It doesn’t play well at all 30 years later.
Another annoyance within the film is the occasional use of novelties which don’t come off good at all. When Welles eats at a local McDonalds he notes with an intense level of amazement that, “fries are pomme frites.” The way this observation is filmed makes him seem more like Forest Gump than the brilliant, creative genius H.G. Welles was. Later, during a dinner conversation with Amy, he tells her the food at the diner is better than the food he had at “that Scottish restaurant, MacDougals.” Painful!
Additionally the plot is constantly creating loopholes that any smart viewer will immediately pick up on. Near the middle of the film Welles & Amy abscond with a newspaper from two days in the future which provides the details of two of Stevenson’s victims. Welles explains to Amy that now that can defeat him because they know when and where he will be. Hey, genius! Why don’t you just return to your own time and…well, I shouldn’t have to explain to you how this bit of logic should be played out.
It’s not a wonder that I found Time After Time forgettable, either then or now. In retrospect it may have played better with commercial breaks as some movies often do. This probably also prevents some viewers from seeing the story’s weaknesses and errors. Still, for a movie about time it did manage to kill it – just not in a good way!
Filed under: Movies/TV on DVD
