Somewhere in Time
Somewhere in Time
PG | 03 October 1980 (USA)
Somewhere in Time Trailers

Young writer Richard Collier is met on the opening night of his first play by an old lady who begs him to "Come back to me". Mystified, he tries to find out about her, and learns that she is a famous stage actress from the early 1900s. Becoming more and more obsessed with her, by self-hypnosis he manages to travel back in time—where he meets her.

Reviews
KnotStronger

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

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Gurlyndrobb

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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Robert Joyner

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

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Scotty Burke

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

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iamfahimhassan

I will rate this movie 10. I don't watch romantic movie much, I started watching this one hoping to watch some time-travelling but as it turned out, it's more of a complex romantic film than a Sci-Fi one. It's the best romantic film I have ever seen! Definitely a must watch if you like combination of Sci-Fi and romance.

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moonspinner55

In 1972, a college writer is approached by an elderly woman who hands him a gold pocket watch and says, "Come back to me." Eight years later, as a professional playwright under deadline, he returns to his old haunts outside Chicago and becomes enamored of a photo he sees of a local theater actress from 1912. Romantic fantasy from screenwriter Richard Matheson, adapting his book "Bid Time Return", has the young man using a self-hypnosis technique to travel from the present day back to the 1900s to meet the mysterious beauty, but her domineering manager may prove to be an obstacle. All the ingredients are here for an opulent, sweeping love story, and yet the formulaic film never lifts off, with Christopher Plummer an arrogant nasty who does everything shy of twirling his mustache. As the eternal lovers, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour are a colorless pair. Seymour has a limited range, though she's well-cast and has the style and grace to carry off her role. Reeve is a pushy, unhappy presence; a light manner or grand emotions don't come easily to him. Jeannot Szwarc directs in a plodding, connect-the-dots fashion, and yet many people have found the picture to be an inspiration. ** from ****

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Ross622

Jeannot Szwarc's "Somewhere in Time" is a well made movie with a very extensive amount of flaws and though it isn't one of the best film romances I've ever seen it is definitely very creative and truly original. Christopher Reeve stars as Richard Collier a Chicago playwright who in the beginning of the movie meets an old woman named Elise McKenna (Susan French) in 1972 while he is still in college and she gives him her watch and says the words "Come back to me" and Collier wonders what she means by that for years even after her death. Now the movie is set in 1979 and Collier is working on a play and he is touring a museum and finds an old picture frame on the wall but it doesn't have a name plate on it. So he goes to this old man named Arthur (Bill Erwin) who works at the hotel and he tells Collier that the woman in the picture is Elise McKenna, and he then tries to get as much information about her as he possibly can from reading books, and even going to her house to ask her maid named Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright) and she tells him things about her such as what she was like and all that sort of stuff, and then he goes to his old philosophy professor and asks him about the possibilities of time travel and is told that he has to do self hypnosis. After that he is back in 1912 and sees the younger version of Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) and introduces himself to her and they fall in love with each other but not without dealing with her paranoid manager named William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer) who is totally in love with McKenna and is thinking that Collier would ruin her career as an actress. Everything beyond this point I will not spoil because I feel that the plot elements afterword are too crucial to the story to spoil. The film is based on Richard Matheson's novel "Bid Time Return" and to compare this to other Matheson adaptations that I've seen such as "The Last Man on Earth" and "I Am Legend" as well as great dramatic romantic tales such as "Out of Africa", "Pride and Prejudice" as well as many others this one is a disappointment, the performances aren't very convincing ( with the exceptions of Reeve, Seymour, and Wright who are very good) especially by Christopher Plummer who is usually a very good actor but he sounds very robotic here, also the dialogue in the scenes before the time travel and with Collier and the younger McKenna, is very bland, wooden, and totally boring. This isn't a bad movie or a good movie but a decent one, and it isn't one of the best films of 1980, and to be honest it is a silly movie in the beginning and also is overrated film.

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disinterested_spectator

In just about any time travel movie you have ever seen, science and technology are involved somehow. Never mind exactly what that scientific explanation is for time travel or what the technological gadget is that makes it possible, because it's all a bunch of hooey anyway. We go along with it not because we believe for one second that such a thing is possible, but because we are willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story. So we know we are in for a different kind of time travel movie when the man that advises Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) about traveling through time is a philosophy professor.According to the philosophy professor, if you want to go back in time, you have to think really hard about the period of time to which you wish to go, while making sure there is nothing in the room that will remind you of the present, such as a recently minted coin. In particular, if Collier wants to go back to August, 1912, he must think August, 1912. It reminded me of Professor Harold Hill in "The Music Man" (1962) telling the students who just got their new musical instruments that they don't need to learn how to read music or the technique of playing the instruments they now own. They just need to "Think the Minuet."Collier wants to go back to 1912 because that is when a woman lived with whom he fell in love while looking at her picture. Now, if you can't find a woman to fall in love with in the time period in which you exist, you have problems that a time machine can't solve. But that aside, it all started when that woman, Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), now very old, gave him a watch and said, "Come back to me," and then walked away. Why she didn't stick around and tell him to read the professor's book on time travel and to "think 1912," we do not know. And what is going on between them in general, we do not know. Of course, there is some kind of meant-for-each-other destiny involved, maybe with a little reincarnation thrown in, but it's hard to tell, because the movie never makes that clear.I know what it is like to be in love, but if I managed to travel back in time just by thinking about it, I would not be able to contain myself. I would have to sit in a chair and contemplate the implications of something I had heretofore thought impossible. Love would just have to wait. On the other hand, if I did catch up with the woman in question, I would have to blurt out, "I fell in love with your picture, so I came back from the future to be with you. If you don't believe me, just take a look at this penny. Oops!"Finally, because Collier fell asleep while he was thinking 1912, we are never sure whether he just dreamed it or not. In fact, at the end of the movie, he seems to be in a catatonic trance. So, maybe what we just watched was the hallucination of a loony. In fact, that really is the only way to make any sense out of this movie.

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