Time After Time (Widescreen)

Something I hear very little of in the other reviews is the introspection, the emotional turmoil of the Wells character himself. The character Wells' point of view on the world and of human nature, circa 1893, does seem to be a artistic snapshot of the real wells. His views of Socialism and government and human nature, while presenting rather unheadily, were transported out of the 19th century past into the 20th century present (circa 1979). The love story with the modern Amy Robbins and the science fiction of the time machine, are for me secondary to the real point of the movie.

Obviously there are lots of cute, artistic ties between what Wells sees during his visit future and what he later is known to have gone on to write about. There are plays on the "War of the Worlds" title versus "world war II". But that's the cutesie fluff. More importantly, this Socialist is compelled to fix his unwitting mistake (the Ripper using his machine) and protect Utopia, but finds that not only is there no Social Utopia, but rather that the world seems to have degenerated into a cold, inhuman Anarchy where even religion fails. Note that the entire experience arose from the discovery that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, his best friend of many years was, in fact, one of the most evil people in the world. The time machine was meant as a tool in Wells' personal study of humanity. In stead its first use was at the hands of evil, as is unfortunately so often the case.

Wells love interest Robbins, is another good plot device in making the business of fighting even even more personal for Wells. Ultimately JOhn (Jack The...) threatens Robbins, absolutely forcing Wells to give in and take up arms - Wells' ultimate anathema.

People have mentioned technical flaws like solar power at night and the time machine changing its location. OK, clearly there was room in the production for someone of Trekkie ilk who could toss in suggestions along the lines of "how about Heisenberg Compensators for the transporter??" With a really vivid imagination and an obsession with sci-fi time travel it's not terribly difficult to fill in some gaps. However, if you watch closely, nowhere ever is there either the suggestion of silly things like a paradox, neither in the dialog nor in the story flow. Indeed, the time travel as a story tool works very nicely. At one point Well and Robbins find something out about the future and try to catch the Ripper in the act. Try as they might, however, they are unable to change the future. Later, another aspect of the future they believed would happen, did happen accurately, but not they way they expected. One could actually take this as a very deep philosophical point. Perhaps paradoxes can't exist; Perhaps there's something more to this one single universe keeping everything running smoothly, including time travellers. Personally, I find the infinite parallel universes idea interesting philosophically, but a total and embarassing cop-out in science fiction. This movie was not attempting to be a Star Trek style sci-fi flick by any means. For this I'm thankful, since it doesn't bog down tis other messages with technical hooey.

To this day, with the obvious likely exception of A Clockwork Orange, I've never seen a Performance by McDowell come anywhere close to this one. For absolute historical accuracy I couldn't speak, but the character he ends up portraying, with the body langauge, facial expressions, and tone of voice, is exceptionally well done.

Let me acho a similar sentiment for Steenbergen and Warner. For her role in this movie, I've had a crush on Mary Steenbergen for all too many years now. (is 25 years too long to hold a crush on someone?) I saw another review here that said there wasn't enough character development on Jack the Ripper. I agree somewhat. I think this was one of Warner's best performances, too. I do wish he'd had even more chance to bring us the pathology of the killer. I know it would have been great. However, in real life Jack the Ripper remains a mysterious figure to this day, not to mention that it wasn't really all that applicable to the rest of the story. Were it a more recent production, I'd expect to see multiple scenes with Warner either put back into the DVD release or at least included elsewhere on the DVD. Fans would like to see it, but it wasn't really necessary to have it in there (think the cut ending scene in The Terminator).

No, it's not a technical masterpiece. It's no The Shining or The Joy Luck Club or Aliens. Hardcore 21st century movie fanatics will likely go "Huh? Why are we watching this?? Where are the CGI transdimentional space aliens and all the Matrix-like gunplay??" To be fair to them I witthold one star.

Personally, I LOVE this movie!