Time After Time
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DVD details
Actor: Charles Cioffi, David Warner, Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, Rita CondeBrand: WHV
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-09-02
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- London 1893 is home to a killer with a macabre nickname. and also to a visionary genius who would write "The Time Machine." But what if H.G. Wells' invention wasn't fiction? And what if Jack the Ripper escaped capture fleeing his own time to take refuge in ours - with Wells himself in pursuit?Running Time: 112 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY Rating: PG Age: 88
DVD Reviews of Time After Time
DVD Review: Leaking like a sieve. Have fun, but don't think
Summary: 2 Stars
Judging from the many 4 & 5 star ratings and the emphatic replies to the few criticisms posted here, it is evident that Time After Time, being cute, elicits unusual sympathy and enthusiasm beyond reasoning. It is somehow understandable: the three leads are very engaging -in spite of the blandness of Wells' character, him and the female lead are endearing while the bad guy is really scary-- and the story is no doubt entertaining. But what surprises me is that Amazon's reviewers, whom I regard as intelligent and well read people, relinquish their critical faculties to join the crowd of (seemingly) undiscriminating T.A.T. admirors.
Yet the film suffers from plot holes that would not remain unnoticed should the film be less charming. **Spoilers!! I suggest those who did not watch the film to stop reading, go to the movie and come back (for fun). By the way, please do not bother to tell me that I am taking this lightweight movie too seriously. Of course I am, and it is part of the fun; a consequence of first accepting the convention of time travel and later demanding subsequent internal coherence in the plot**.
Half of the film's logical craters derive from the fact that the hero (McDowell) possesses a perfectly controllable machine which would allow him to go back and forth in time any way he wants, as much as he wants and as many times as he wants. Carried to its logical consequences, this all-powerful machine would pose to a screenwriter the same problem that Superman's powers created in due time; it was necessary to invent Kryptonite to put the otherwise omnipotent Superman in any danger. My point here is: Wells could go back in time as much as he needed and land at any moment when he could be certain to stop the Ripper (Warner). Even if he fails, he can always try again and again, each time acquiring a better knowledge of what will be happening. (It is like in the better "Groundhog's Day" or "12:01" films, only in a controlled way).
Such repeated looping in time might make for an interesting and different argument: for example, imagine that Ms. Robbins (Steenburgen) is in fact murdered by the Ripper; at the last moment Wells goes back in time and save her. Cool enough to me, but screenwriter Meyer missed that or decided against it.
Otherwise, to avoid the paralizing consequences of having a perfect machine, the writer should have incorporated limitations to the process (say, "I can jump every xx days", "I cannot go to a time when I am already there", "minimal jump distance is xx weeks/xx months", etc). Nothing of the sort is here, but (the fictionally dumb) Wells is unable to grasp the possibilities he has at hand and thus suffers unnecessary anguish.
As of the other inconsistencies, with a little more care, they could have been avoided (or explained away). Let's review a few of them:
What made the machine move from London to San Francisco? Why it fell precisely in the middle of an HGWells exhibit? In which way that fact is an explanation? What a coincidence the machine dropped on an empty space instead of crushing a display cabinet or two! Nobody at the museum noticed that suddenly there was a gigantic contraption that wasn't there?
Wells and Ms Robbins stay after hours at the Museum to make a one-week jump in time. After they return, how do they get out of the Museum if it is closed? Worse yet: near the end, in the middle of the night, Ripper, carrying Miss Robbins as a hostage and closely followed by Wells, storm the Museum for the final scene. How did they get inside? The Museum was open at night? In spite of all the imaginable clatter of three people running in (one under duress), no museum guards appear to see what's going on.
The final scene is hilarious. the Ripper, a cold blooded murderer, at the last moment lets Miss Robbins escape, showing that he was a bleeding heart, after all. Apparently he is distracted by the jingle of his pocket watch, that keeps coming up several times during the film. What is the meaning of the watch? Who knows! (Nice watch; therefore it must be a great movie)
Then, Ripper is going to escape in The Machine. But at the last moment, Wells simply removes a second key (a Fourth Dimension Transporter, no doubt -no serious machine comes without one) and sends the Ripper "to the infinity". Let alone asking where the hell that place Infinity is: how did Wells know that Infinity is where Ripper went? He had tried that himself? (Also, we are lucky that Ripper was not carrying a Fourth Dimension Transporter Counteractor, which would have stopped Wells from sending him to The Infinity -unless of course Wells was able to reply with a Protonic Temporal Shifter, which would have rendered the Fourth Dimension Transporter Counteractor useless, thus enabling the full action of the Fourth Dimension Transporter key. You get the idea.)
Dear Nicholas: Killing the Ripper in a more conventional way was out of the question, isn't it? For instance, Wells could have used the pistol that first adamantly -and after a grand-standing pacifist speech-- he was refusing to get in spite of Ms. B.'s life being at risk but later he did get because Ms. B.'s life was at risk. (Dear H.G.: Make up your mind. What is gonna be?)
With the Rippers' threat on the girl's life pending, Wells advises her to move to a hotel ONLY if he does not come back. So he leaves her defenseless (in alcoholic stupor!) in her own apartment, though it is clear Ripper knows where she is. What prevented her from moving to the hotel first, and only later sleep? She was understandably scared of the Ripper, who could come any moment, so --logically enough-- she accepts staying in the house alone and take a nap. A very clever and probable behaviour of them both; another sterling moment for the screenwriter.
Of all places, why on Earth was the police waiting for HG outside Miss Robbins' house? How did they know of her existence? If they knew of her: why they did not take her to the Precinct for interrogation (at least as a witness)?
The Police Detective (Defective, rather) is devoid of any curiosity. After arresting Wells in front of the girl's house and listening him repeatedly beg to send a police car to that house he still is not interested in having a word or two with the girl and he seems certain that nothing bad could happen to her.
When it becomes clear to the Police Defective that Wells can't be the murderer he frees Wells, in spite of the fact that it is also evident that HG knows the murderer and he could help the police identify him. Apparently the Defective's lack of curiosity includes that he does not want to have a portrait/profile (or whatever they are called) made by a police artist upon Wells' description of the Ripper.
So after Wells is freed, at some arbitrary place in the city and in the middle of the night, the Ripper -with the girl as a hostage-- finds him. Is San Francisco that small?
It turns out the latest victim was not Miss Robbins, but a friend of hers that dropped by for dinner, though Ms B didn't remember the appointment. How convenient! How probable is this to happen!
How lucky the heroes are: when they climbed into the machine and jumped one week ahead they stopped exactly the right day to learn that Ms Robbins was going to be killed! (One day more or less and nothing would have happened.) In compensation for this lucky strike, they have awfully bad luck with the tire puncture (which apparently also belongs in the category of very probable things to happen.) Couldn't Nicholas thing of a better reason to delay the heroes? Obviously not; the film is plagued with these contrived suspense-making devices.
And so on. As my eventual critics would say: don't take this movie too seriously. Better yet: don't take it seriously, period.
Description of Time After Time
Synopsis:Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: PG
Street Date: 09/02/08
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.
In this clever speculative tale, story collaborators Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes and screenwriter-director Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II and VI) send two famous historical figures ahead in time. In late 19th century England, writer H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) unwittingly includes Jack the Ripper (David Warner) in his social circle. When one of Wells's dinner parties is crashed by the police looking for the Ripper, Jack uses the author's time machine to escape. But there's one catch--after it has been used, the machine returns to Wells's time. Thus the literary genius bravely sets out to find his evil friend before he can wreak havoc on another time period, and soon arrives in modern-day San Francisco. What follows is a fascinating merger of a suspense thriller--as the charming and polite Wells tries to hunt down the shrewd, brutish Ripper and take him back to the past--and a love story, as Wells befriends and falls in love with a bank administrator (Mary Steenburgen) who acts as his guide through the future. Through its brilliant combination of creepy suspense and tender romance, Time After Time manages to become a classic in two genres at once--a rare cinematic achievement. --Bryan Reesman
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