Critic Reviews

Given that this holiday film season has come up more than a little short on love and laughter, one can easily forgive Kate & Leopold the slightly excessive lengths and complications to which it goes in search of those rare commodities.

For the first half-hour I, too, demurred. And then the irresistible force that is Hugh Jackman -- or was it his swoony Leopold? -- swept me off my seat and into the movie.

It's a charmer.

Meg Ryan does this sort of thing about as well as it can possibly be done, and after "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail," here is another ingenious plot that teases us with the possibility that true love will fail, while winking that, of course, it will prevail.

This winning confection, from a director (Heavy, Cop Land) not known for the lightness of his material or his touch, shows a fine understanding of what the screenwriters of the '40s instinctively grasped, that good screwball is about dialogue and chemistry.

It's no myth: All play and no work makes Jackman, as Leopold, a doll of a boyfriend.

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

Director and co-writer James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) is supplying comfort food for bruised romantics.

Has only the most tangential relation to reality, and therein lies its slender charm.

A flawed time-travel love story, benefits from Meg Ryan's reliable perkiness and establishes Australia's Hugh Jackman as a potent romantic leading man. These and other pluses, however, cannot overcome the film's inability to come alive for a full hour and 20 minutes.