place in time movie review

Somewhere In Time: A Tragic Fairytale

If Cinderella was about a time traveling Prince, he was the one to disappear at “midnight”, and they DIDN’T live happily ever after… You’d have ‘Somewhere in Time’.

Before The Lake House or The Time Traveler’s Wife , came the time-bending romance ‘Somewhere in Time’. Harnessing the collective star power of Christopher Plummer, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Reeve, the screenplay was written by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the novel on which the film was based.

Set in 1980, the film gives us a voyeuristic look into the life of Richard Collier, a successful playwright portrayed by Christopher Reeve (Superman, Deathtrap) . Collier goes on an unscheduled getaway prompted by a bout of writer’s block, ending up at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Wandering the hotel, Richard stumbles upon a small museum of hotel artifacts and… this is where the movie really begins. We watch as Richard is drawn— almost against his will— to a photograph that changes his life: A portrait of actress Elise McKenna, played by Jane Seymour (Live and Let Die, Dr. Quinn) .

From that moment, Richard is captivated by Ms. McKenna and her Mona Lisa smile. Finding the picture was taken sixty years earlier, Collier goes down a rabbit hole of research. He learns all he can about Elise, each clue deepening his obsession, hinting at an implausible truth: Somehow, in the distant past, the two had known each other. This sets Richard on a quest to see if time travel is possible, as he is determined to achieve it.

( Major SPOILERS ahead )

Locking himself in his room, he dons an early twentieth century suit, and cuts his hair to match. He spends the better part of the day listening to a recording of his own voice, trying to convince himself that it is 1912, the last time Elise McKenna was seen at the hotel. After several hours, he realizes the recording– made with technology that hadn’t existed in 1912– was the very thing preventing him from transporting to the past.

Removing all reminders of the present, Richard again attempts to will himself back in time– and it works. He finds himself in 1912, exactly as he had imagined.

This is a rare moment in movie history, more fairytale than science fiction, where time travel is not achieved via wristwatches or cars or phone booths: It’s more like Dorothy, caught in a tornado, carried off into the Land of Oz.

Collier proceeds to find Elise, overcomes her initial rebuttals, and convinces her of his sincerity of heart. In the span of three days, they go on a horse & carriage ride, share a romantic afternoon in a rowboat (anyone else getting ‘Little Mermaid’ vibes, here?), and bond as only movie lovers can. The only obstacle to their newfound happiness is Elise’s manager, William Robinson, portrayed by Christopher Plummer (Sound of Music, Doctor Parnassus) . Regarding himself as her protector, he opposes the match in every way. He even has Collier attacked by thugs. Still, Richard and Elise find their way back to each other, Elise turning her back on her life as an actress, and Robinson.

But just as the couple start to make plans, Collier accidentally pulls something from his pocket that reminds him of the future: A 1979 penny. In one of the most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever seen, Richard is pulled away from his love. In a scene extremely reminiscent of “the sunken place” in Jordan Peele’s Get Out , Richard watches Elise fade into the distance, as we’re left with her screams of abject terror.

My Thoughts

Each side of me has her own thoughts. Here are a few:

The Feminist finds Richard’s obsessive desperation insulting: A successful writer, fresh off a breakup, runs from his problems, then promptly fixates on an unobtainable pretty face. Richard essentially time-stalks a dead woman, then applies emotional pressure until she responds the way he’d like. That’s not love. Not a healthy one at least. It’s also ridiculous that she gives up her career and her father figure for a three-day love affair.

The Activist is concerned that there were apparently no Black people in 1980. There didn’t even appear to be any Negro servants in 1912. #Erasure

The Romantic & The Christopher Reeve Fangirl feel like he was the only person that could sell this character on screen. There are moments of such breathtaking sincerity that they make me believe in time travel, magic, and destiny. No one could sell love and heartbreak like Christopher Reeve. Just watch the Lois Lane death scene in Superman: The Movie . But there are also moments of inappropriate camp that jolt me out of the story.

Plummer, as always, is menacing, charming, regal, and believable. Seymour puts in an excellent performance, as well. For me, however, Reeve is the breath and heartbeat of this film.

Yes, this movie is a mixed bag, depending on what values you bring to the viewing, but all in all, I think it is a semi-polished gem: It may not sparkle, but it’s priceless.

Also Read: The Film Fan’s Guide To Time Travel

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ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968) – The Making Of A Western Classic

Blazing saddles: a 50th anniversary retrospective, 1994 part seven: forrest gump – the first and last blockbuster of its kind, severance: a review of the stunning apple tv+ show, reacher: the hits and misses of amazon prime’s popular series, making the munsters (1963-66), hollywood feuds: angelina jolie and jon voight, who killed hot toddy the mysterious death of thelma todd, the hollywood vampires – a drunken oral history, scholars’ spotlight: douglas fairbanks jr. – the last prince of hollywood’s golden age, scholars’ spotlight: ray harryhausen, scholars’ spotlight: the legacy of irving thalberg, longlegs: a review of the new nicolas cage horror film, deadpool & wolverine review: to say or not to say, twisters review: you put an “s” at the end, james bond in space the making of moonraker (1979), scholars’ spotlight: audrey hepburn, scholars’ spotlight: robert shaw, the mouse trap: writer and co-star simon phillips talks up his new horror film, the good half interviews part two: david arquette, the good half interviews part one: elisabeth shue, somewhere in time (1980): a love story for the ages, introduction.

Mostly panned by critics and performing poorly at the box office, the Jeannot Szwarc-directed Somewhere in Time (1980) was the little movie that could. And it did. Richard Matheson’s moving and tragic book and subsequent screenplay have stood the test of time in the ensuing four decades as the film has developed a cult-like following. So much so that there are fan clubs and fanzines all over the world celebrating this now iconic love story.

To this day, legions of fans from all over the world converge on Mackinac Island, Michigan to visit the sprawling and palatial Grand Hotel, where this tale of love and tragedy takes place.  From on-set romances to annual Comic-con-like conventions, the story of the making (and subsequent history) of Somewhere In Time is a fantastical tale. This is the journey of one of the most captivating love stories ever filmed.

Legendary science-fiction writer Richard Matheson was inspired to pen the source novel “Bid Time Return” after seeing a portrait of actress Maude Adams, hanging inside an Opera House in Nevada. The young Matheson became mesmerized by the portrait and began to research the actress, finding numerous interesting details on the reclusive actress’s life. The genesis for Matheson’s novel was born.

The author dived into his newest project, ‘becoming’ the main character of Richard Collier. In the early 1970s, Matheson stayed at the Hotel del Coronado in California (where the story takes place) for weeks, dictating his thoughts into a tape recorder. In fact, Matheson would base much of the background information of his leading lady, Elise McKenna, directly on Maude Adams. Released in 1975, the novel went on to win the 1976 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It also caught the attention of Universal Pictures producer Steven Deutsch.

Richard Matheson, Stephen Deutsch, and director Jeannot Szwarc ( Enigma, The Murders in the Rue Morgue ) joined forces to fix the screenplay so that it would get the green light from Universal Pictures. Universal also ‘owed Szwarc a favor’ as he was the director of Jaws II (1978), which was a monster hit for Universal that year. Szwarc did what he could but the studio would only agree to put up the money if they cut the budget in half. They agreed.

With a budget of under $5 million, how did the trio of Szwarc, Deutsch, and Matheson nab both Superman and a Bond girl to star in their film? Carefully and with a bit of luck. As per Deutsch, Reeve’s agent balked when told the salary his client would be making. Reeve was a global star after his now iconic portrayal of Superman (1978). The agent refused to allow Reeve to even get near the script. That didn’t stop  Deutsch who secretly slipped it to Reeve in the actor’s hotel room. Reeve loved it and agreed to do it. 

Reeve had turned down more money and starring roles in Urban Cowboy (1980), American Gigolo (1980), and Body Heat (1981) to star in the low-budget period-piece romantic drama. The late and much-beloved actor spoke to the New York Times in 1980 on why his follow-up to Superman was such a dramatic and tonal shift:

“I like the character…A man who’s incomplete. He has all the material things he needs, all the comforts, but he’s missing a passionate commitment to something other than himself and goes in search of it. It’s an absolutely honest attempt to create an old-fashioned romance. It’s based on love rather than on sex or X-rated bedroom scenes.” 

After first appearing in film back in 1969, Jane Seymour hit the big time when she nabbed the role of Bond Girl ‘Solitaire’ in the Roger Moore film Live and Let Die (1973). She followed this up by appearing as Princess Farah in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). She also appeared in both the TV and film versions of Battlestar Galactica in the late 1970s. Much like with her co-star, when Seymour first read the script for Somewhere in Time , she was intrigued. After appearing in such standard fare as Oh Heavenly Dog (1980), the actress was ready for a change.  Seymour came to her audition wearing a 1912-era gown and hairdo. She got the part.

Synopsis (w- Spoilers)

In 1972, Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is celebrating the premiere of his newest play. An older woman comes up to Richard, handing him a pocket watch. She begs him, “Come back to me.” After the woman returns home, she passes away in her sleep. Eight years later, Richard is in Chicago and riddled with writer’s block. A successful playwright, Richard decides he needs a change of scenery. He drives to a resort called The Grand Hotel. While looking at all of the portraits on the hotel walls, he becomes transfixed on a vintage photo of Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), a stunning and successful stage actress from the early twentieth century and the same person who handed Richard the pocket watch.

Richard soon seeks out the former housekeeper of Elise, Laura (Teresa Wright). It is after meeting Laura that Richard begins to feel a deep connection to the now-deceased Elise. He opens a music box that plays Richards’s favorite piece of music by Rachmaninoff. He also discovers a book on time travel among Elise’s possessions. With Richard now falling in love (and obsession) with Elise, he researches how to travel back in time. It is during this research that Richard meets Dr. Gerrad Finney (George Voskovec), who states that he has been able to briefly travel back in time via self-suggestion. Richard realizes that he must try. 

The Journey Back

Dressed in period attire, Richard removes all modern accouterments from his body and hotel room. Using self-hypnosis, he fails to accomplish his goal of traveling back in time. Later, after looking through very old sign-in books from the hotel, Richard, indeed, sees his own signature. This gives him the needed willpower to try again. This time, he succeeds, awakening in 1912. He quickly tracks Elise down who upon first glance asks Richard “Is it you?” Her manager and keeper William Robinson (Christopher Plummer) breaks up the party and whisks Elise away, sensing potential trouble. Richard continues to pursue Elise who eventually agrees to go on a stroll, and then a boat ride with him. The two quickly begin to fall in love.

Elise tells Richard that her manager had predicted that she would meet someone who would change her life forever and that she should be fearful. Richard then shows Elise the pocket watch that she will eventually give him in 1972. Richard attends a play that Elise is starring in. During the play’s intermission, Elise poses for a formal photograph. As the shot is about to be taken, Elise sees Richard and smiles. This is the same image that Richard sees almost seventy years later.

Afterward, Richard is confronted by Robinson who sternly asks Richard to leave. Richard refuses, claiming that Robison is jealous of their love for each other. However, Robinson is merely obsessed with Elise becoming and staying a star and has no romantic interest in her. Richard refuses to back down and Robinson has Richard beaten, gagged, and locked in the horse stables. Robinson tells Elise that Richard never loved her and has left the grounds of the hotel. Of course, Elise doesn’t believe this and states to Robinson that she loves Richard, and always has.

The next morning Richard awakens in the stables and frees himself. While Elise’s acting company has left for Denver, she has remained to try and find Richard. They reunite and make love in her room for the first time. Richard and Elise agree to never leave each other and to get married as soon as possible. Elise also tells him that his suit is ten years out of style and promises to buy him a new one. Inside one of the pockets of his suit, Richard pulls out a shiny new 1979 penny. This breaks the hypnotic suggestion. Thus, pulling Richard into the present as Elise screams in horror.

Richard, who is now back in 1980, is physically drained from the time travel. In a panic, Richard attempts to return to 1912. However, these attempts prove fruitless and Richard is now stuck in the present day. After wandering the hotel grounds for weeks, without food, depressed and despondent, Richard collapses. Arthur (Bill Erwin), Richard’s friend and the hotel groundskeeper calls the paramedics but it’s too late. Richard dies of a broken heart. In the film’s closing moments, we see Richard joining Elise in the afterlife, reunited for eternity.

While it was the intention to film at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, that proved difficult. This was due to the modern utility lines, street traffic, and huge buildings surrounding the hotel. Soon after, the production team looked through the book “Great American Hotels” and discovered the Grand Hotel, located on Mackinac Island, Michigan. The island and hotel had appeared to be untouched by time. It was a stunning location to spend a Summer in. The team, of course, went to visit it in the middle of Winter. Still, even with Lake Huron covered in ice and snow, Szwarc and Deutsch knew this was the location for their love story.

Filming began on Somewhere in Time in the last week of May 1979, in Chicago for five days. Cast and crew then headed for Mackinac Island in early June for six weeks. The entire production immersed themselves in the hotel’s vibrant and historic aesthetic. A time when the horse and buggy were the predominant means of transportation. In fact, cars are not allowed on Mackinac Island. The use of cars for the ‘modern’ scenes required special permission from the town. Cars were allowed for filming, but the cast and crew could not drive on the island outside of filming. Many of the Mackinac Island residents were cast as extras in the film.

Cinematographer Isidore Mankofsky filmed the modern scenes with longer lenses and used more contrast-full Eastman film stock. Scenes that were set in the 1920s, however, were filmed using wide-angle lenses with Fuji film stock. Thus creating a different color palette and visual effect for the film. Mankofsky spoke with American Cinematographer in 1980 about the decision to create two distinct visual styles for the film:

“…We had to make sure that, in terms of visual presentation, these two periods would not look the same. The objective was to carry the audience back in time subtly but with a definite difference in the ‘look’ from one era to the other…We used Eastman color negative for the contemporary sequences because it tends to be a little harder in the shadows and to have a crisper, more solid look to it…We decided to go with Fuji color negative for the period sequences because it seems to be a bit more pastel. It doesn’t appear to have quite the resolving power of the Kodak stock…”

Music and Costumes

When it came to scoring Somewhere in Time , Actress Jane Seymour recommended legendary composer John Barry to director Jeannot Szwarc. Szwarc liked the idea but didn’t think that they could even afford to ask the multi-Oscar-winning composer. Seymour stated that Barry was a close friend of hers and that she would ask him to do it for scale. Barry loved the story and agreed to do it. It wound up becoming Barry’s all-time best-selling score, outselling all his other soundtracks combined. Barry had also wisely agreed to create the music in return for a small percentage of the soundtrack sales.

The film’s enchanting and soul-crushing theme music, which was selected by Barry, was the eighteenth variation of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini”. With Barry’s now iconic original score along with the use of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody, the soundtrack became a huge surprise for Universal Records. Thus, making both Barry and Universal a lot of money for many decades to come. Music shops were inundated with requests for the film’s soundtrack. So much so that fifty-thousand more albums had to be ordered to satisfy the initial request.

Somewhere In Time garnered one Academy Award Nomination, for Best Costume Design, and deservedly so. The film wound up losing to Tess (1979), but the legacy of the costumes in Somewhere in Time lives on. Legendary costume designer  Jean-Pierre Dorleac created all of the designs for the principal actors. Dorleac has stated that Seymour’s costume from the play cost $30,000 and was stolen before principal photography was completed. Jean-Pierre Dorleac spoke with Costume Design Archive in 2021 about getting inspiration to work on the film:

“…I watched Death in Venice, Mr. Skeffington, and Mrs. Parkington, in addition to the 1953 Fox film Titanic…To make certain all the accessories were factual I was granted access to the remaining books and the periodical library at MGM, where from bound volumes of period magazines I made notes about the customs, styles and colors of the days relating to the months in the story. Although I knew the era backward and forward from the many plays I had designed, I was searching to find a unique and character-defining style for the character of Elise McKenna, an actress with au courant haute couture taste…”

Falling in Love

Maybe it was the right place at the right time in the right setting that brought Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour together in real life. But Seymour has confirmed that this is what indeed happened during the production of Somewhere in Time. Seymour, now seventy-two, revealed what happened between her and Reeve at the 2022 TCM Classic Film Festival :

“Well, here comes the story that I’m officially telling you now, because Chris and I when we made the film, we literally fell madly in love…When you see this film, you will see the real thing. But we didn’t let anyone know…A few of the people who worked on the show kind of sussed it out, but we were as subtle as we could be about it”

In the case of the production of Somewhere in Time , art truly was imitating life, as Reeve and Seymour just were not meant to be. While they both were single and falling for each other during filming, towards the end of the shoot, Reeve’s ex-girlfriend Gae Exton let the actor know that she was pregnant with his child and was going public. This brought a crushing end to the relationship between Reeve and Seymour. The pair, however, remained close friends right up until the actor’s death in 2004. Seymour spoke to the audience at the 2022 TCM Classic Film Festival :

“The good part of the story is that Chris went on to have these two beautiful children and we met one another on many occasions…We remained really, really close friends, literally until the day he died. I have to believe that I will one day see him somewhere in time”

Release and Reception

A cast and crew screening in April 1980 gave everyone hope that Somewhere in Time would be a big hit. In fact, the opposite happened. The film was released on October 3, 1980, in the middle of an actors’ strike. This meant that the film’s actors couldn’t make appearances on TV or radio shows to promote it, thus generating no interest from the viewing public. Universal was also more focused on spending their dollars on trying to recoup their investment in the big-budgeted comedy The Blues Brothers (1980). The end result was Somewhere in Time came and went, underperforming at the box office.

Despite mixed to poor reviews domestically and an actor’s strike, the film was well-received overseas. Especially in Hong Kong where it became a cult hit. Somewhere in Time screened at the Palace Theater in British Hong Kong for a record-breaking 223 straight days. A record at the time, it sold the theater out for three straight months. The film went on to gross almost $10 million in Hong Kong, making it the highest-grossing international film of the year. It also had something else going for it – cable television.

Channel Z was the first ‘paid’ movie channel in Los Angeles. Its programmer, Jerry Harvey, loved Somewhere in Time . He ran the film all the time – sometimes twice a day. It began to catch on and the struggling and relatively new HBO wanted in. Since they couldn’t afford to pay for the more ‘expensive’ films, they began to run the film all the time as well. Combine this with growing VHS and soundtrack sales, and Somewhere in Time became a cult hit. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design (Jean-Pierre Dorleac) and won the Saturn Award for Best Costume, Best Music, and Best Fantasy Film. 

Somewhere in Time found its footing in the early 1980s via cable TV and the foreign (Orient) market. As a result, the film began to be reassessed by fans and critics alike. This culminated in 1990 when superfan Bill Shepard founded INSITE (International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts). What followed over the subsequent three-plus decades was meticulous and fact-filled quarterly newsletters that, to date, have totaled over 2500 pages dedicated to what many were now calling the most romantic movie of all time.

Most importantly, however, is that Shepard, INSITE, and the film’s legions of fans helped create the ‘Somewhere in Time Weekend.’ This was an annual pilgrimage to The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island where everybody would dress up in period costumes, attend a grand ball, dance, and revel in the majesty. It was also an opportunity for the filmmakers and actors to revisit those six weeks in June 1979 and give thanks to the fans who had turned a box-office flop into an enduring classic.

Director Jeannot Szwarc, Richard Matheson, and Costume Designer Jean-Pierre Dorleac, all came to the initial gathering at the Grand Hotel in 1991. The Somewhere in Time weekends have been going strong for over three decades now. Fans from all over the world have made the Grand Hotel and Mackinac Island a ‘bucket list’ item. They are rewarded with nostalgia and memorabilia from the film spread all over the island in loving tribute to this magical film. Reeve himself came to the event in 1994 and was asked about where the film ranks for him. He stated:

“This holds the prime place by the fireside in my heart. This is the one that I have the greatest gratitude for. It’s very hard to perform and do your work, where you put your emotions forward for the camera, for people to see…and then have it greeted officially by the sound of one hand clapping. And that people found this move and said, ‘Wait a minute! It didn’t deserve the fate that it got. It didn’t deserve to be treated that way.’ It moves me more than you can know”

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Somewhere In Time (1980) – A Review

A review of the 1980 romantic fantasy Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer, about a playwright who travels back to 1912 to meet an actress

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Present day Chicago playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) has been experiencing a bit of writer’s block. He decides to step away from his typewriter and a break and some time away from the city might do him some good. He ends up booking a stay at the historic Grand Hotel in Michigan. 

Wandering the hotel Reeve discovers a photograph of early 20th century stage actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour). He becomes obsessed with this image of the beautiful actress. He researches her, visits elderly friends of hers and tries to learn all he can about her. Even after learning she had died several years earlier he can’t shake the connection he feels with her.

Richard then attempts to travel back in time over seventy years to 1912 to be able to meet Elise at a time when she was also a guest at the Grand Hotel – and miraculously somehow he awakens in the past.

Famed writer Richard Matheson adapted the script from his novel Bid Time Return. Director Jeannot Szwarc ( Jaws 2, Supergirl ) amps up this romance and crafts a touching love story that packs more of an emotional wallop than you could hope to ever find in any Hallmark movie.

It’s no surprise Somewhere In Time , although not a box office success upon its initial release, has gained a devoted cult following since then. Ironically, it took time for people to discover it. 

Does it make sense, well…best not to think too much about the time travel aspect to it. There’s not a lot of science going on with time machines, souped up DeLoreans, time paradoxes or anything like that. This is a romantic fantasy, Reeve being able to leap back over seventy years is a story device. Just accept that and allow yourself to get swept up into it. 

It all starts with that mesmerizing portrait of Elsie hanging in the hotel. He’s captivated by this woman, but doesn’t fully know why. He begins to try to learn everything he can about her. An informative visit to Elsie’s friend played by Teresa Wright affirms this strange connection he has to this woman in the past and his crazy idea of trying to travel back in time to meet her.

It’s the start of the film some time travel seeds start to get planted. You know the type of things. Seemingly insignificant items that will pay off in a ‘wrap around’ way once this trip to the past takes place. They earn a whole more emotional meaning when we see the whole story fall into place.

It’s probably the simplest and least expensive method of time travel any story could have. I think if this were ever a viable means of time travel, history books would be really goofed up by modern day folks waking up all over the place in different times throughout the ages.

So, he’s in 1912 at the Grand Hotel, wearing the vintage clothing he acquired, Richard sets out to find Elsie. Thanks to all his research he knows she’s scheduled to perform a play at the hotel and some information that will come in handy.

Fortunately for Richard and us this trip was worth it and there are immediate sparks between the two. At first Elsie is apprehensive towards Richard, but he didn’t make this trip just to be quietly turned away. His persistence pays off and Elsie gradually begins to get intrigued by this stranger in the brown suit. 

If you were going to travel back in time to meet a woman, Seymour seems like a perfect candidate to make the journey for.

Reeve is really good. While he might forever be first and foremost known as Superman, Somewhere in Time shows he didn’t need a cape to be charming. He was quite adept at light comedy and could kill it in the romance department.

It’s not just the time difference that will be a hurdle for these these time-crossed lovers. Christopher Plummer plays Elsie’s manager. He’s been watching over since she was a teen, grooming her for stardom and won’t allow anyone to complicate the future he has mapped out for her or jeopardize all that they’ve worked for.

How can she possibly just throw that all away for a man she just met? The different time periods they come from seems like a minor inconvenience compared to getting Elsie out from under Plummer’s hold.

It’s clear it’s not an expensive film with a big budget, so there’s no huge sweeping shots to sell the period. At times it looks quaint and TV movie-ish, but it manages to overcome it’s limitations and effectively convey that Richard is walking around this hotel in the early twentieth century. 

It is sappy and has some of those romantic cliches that we see in many romantic films, but here they feel fresher than they deserve to. Perhaps it’s the unique premise that helps them, or the actors or dialogue make it all easier to accept. But it all works remarkably well. 

Reeve and Seymour are so charming together you can’t help but get swept up in this romantic tale – and many fans over the years really have!

Somewhere In Time has gained devoted fans who have captured the. There have been ann annual event held at the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, where they filmed the movie in 1979. The hotel has embraced its connection to the film and host annual event to celebrate it.

It’s quite remarkable considering when the film was first released it was vitally ignored by everyone. It’s apparent there’s something about the story and film that has touched fans.

And how such a small seemingly insignificant item can shatter an epic romance. I don’t think they’ll ever sell a ‘ Somewhere In Time change dish’.

There’s a lot to make your heart swoon, get invested in this love story and hope these two characters will be given a happy ending.

There is something magical about the story and the filmmakers and actors captured the perfect tone for it to make it as timeless a love story for audiences as it is for Richard and Elsie.  

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2 thoughts on “ somewhere in time (1980) – a review ”.

IRON MAN (a minute ago, copied from Gab Dissenter app for this page).

I saw this as a kid and was rather taken with it – particularly the unusual time travel method. There’s something alluring about a superpower one can develop through a little obscure knowledge and a lot of practice/effort. The kind of thing that a viewer might be tempted to privately try IRL just to see if it doesn’t work, (how many kids do you think have tried to ‘use the Force’ after seeing a Star Wars film?) I think it’s the kind of story element that has teenage girls repeating the names of serial killers into a mirror, or leading one of their friends out into the woods to sacrifice them to Slenderman.

I’ve noticed a similar element in other works I have a soft spot for, and I think what makes it interesting is there’s only a single modicum of luck in finding out about the secret knowledge in the first place, (you’re NOT a wizard Harry), but a great barrier of effort and commitment that keeps other people from achieving results, (and that’s what makes the protagonist special/worthy). In “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”, a short story by Roald Dahl, the protagonist finds out how to meditate and see through cards so he can win at gambling but only after years of practice. In the admittedly bad B-movie “Mindkiller”(1987), the geeky introverted protagonist finds an old book in the library with instructions on how to expand his mind and intelligence so he can mentally control and pick up chicks.

So I think Christopher Reeve sitting it a hotel room for days on end trying to focus and make himself 100% convinced he is actually in 1912 is as simple as it is brilliant. It is more than just a lazy/simplistic method of glossing over the time travel mechanism for the sake of the story.

I only knew Reeve as Superman the first time I saw this of course, so seeing him in something else was a bit of a trip, but I thought he was great. I remembered this movie ever after, and looked it up and watched it again from time to time over the years, understanding more of the romantic aspects later.

Good little film. It doesn’t have any time travelling robots shooting phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range or anything, but worth the time, (no pun intended). So one of the few time travel flicks you can watch with your girl and she’ll enjoy it too, (another good one is ‘About Time’ (2013) by the way).

I tried the version of time travel in this film. I’ll just say that my score of record on the test I was trying to change didn’t move so much as a point…

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Somewhere in Time (United States, 1980)

It’s hard to imagine any version of Richard Matheson’s 1975 novel Bid Time Return working. The level of suspension of disbelief is so high that, although can be achieved in a written work, where the imagination is engaged, the same is not true in the more concrete realm of cinema. Although some critics have honed in on Somewhere in Time ’s overt sentimentality as its chief failing, I could never get past its hokey means of time travel. In fact, if one considers it with any degree of logic, the movie isn’t about time travel at all. Instead, it’s about a delusion that evolves out of an obsession.

Somewhere in Time opens in the early 1970s at an after-party where newly-minted playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is being feted for the success of his debut property. During the celebration, he is approached by an old woman – probably in her eighties – who gives him a pocket watch and encourages his to “Come back to me.” Eight years later, now an established figure, Richard opts to take a break and clear his mind at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. While there, he becomes obsessed with a photograph of actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), taken in 1912. He soon discovers that the woman who approached him in 1972 was Elise (on the day of her death). Richard is improbably convinced that he played some part in Elise’s life nearly seventy years prior to the present day and that causes him to look into the viability of time travel.

Somewhere in Time is murky and underwritten. The basic premise would be thin even for a Harlequin romance. None of the characters are sufficiently developed to warrant audience investment and the ultimate resolution – a metaphysical glimpse of the afterlife – is more insulting than satisfying. Plus, it’s hard to imagine such undying passion resulting from what is, distilled to its essence, a one-night stand. The film defies any kind of thoughtful examination.

The self-hypnosis method of time travel is idiotic. It’s less plausible than an H.G. Welles time machine or a Doctor Who TARDIS. It leaves open the possibility (perhaps “probability” would be a better term) that the entire 1912 episode (which consumes approximately 2/3 of the running time) is a delusion. After all, self-hypnosis is about training the mind not transmuting a physical mass across a span of nearly seven decades. (In the source material, Richard is terminally ill with brain cancer, which enhances the ambiguity of whether any time travel actually happens.) Even if one was to accept that Richard does physically shift from 1980 to 1912, the methodology of how this happens is difficult (at best) to swallow.

The best thing about Somewhere in Time is the score. Composed by John Barry, who took a significant pay cut because of his friendship with Seymour, this represents one of Barry’s all-time best works, alongside the likes of 1976’s King Kong , Dances with Wolves , and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service . He incorporates the 18 th variation of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with his own compositions to create a soundtrack that became more successful than the movie.

Despite all the narrative problems and the limitations associated with Reeve’s performance, director Jeannot Szwarc should be given credit for keeping the movie marginally watchable. The pacing is brisk and the cinematography is lush and interesting. There are times when the romance seems to work largely because of Barry’s score and the way Szwarc has framed the scenes, focusing on the attractiveness of the leads and/or the scenery. Overall, however, Somewhere in Time is frustrating as a series of missed opportunities and the passage of more than forty years hasn’t softened the view.

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Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time Delves Into a Dreamy, Horny Lost Era

As subjects go, the quaint hippie hood of Laurel Canyon is the gift that keeps on giving—much like the STIs traded freely among its inhabitants. In the half century that has passed since its peak, scads of books, television programs, and oral histories have thumbed a reverential ride back up the winding roads between Sunset and Mulholland.

Now Epix is premiering a new documentary on the subject: director Alison Ellwood’s new two-part docuseries Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time , that premiered May 31. Through newly found, playfully intimate photos and footage, fresh interviews with a few dozen key players, and extensive photography collections and narration from Canyon photographers Henry Diltz and Nurit Wilde, Ellwood serves up a sun-dappled, quarantine dream of a place whose significance to the era’s music scene can’t be overstated.

Between roughly 1965 and 1975, Laurel Canyon—a charmed cluster of swerving roads and offbeat cottages that recline between Hollywood and the Valley—lured grade-A musicians from Joni Mitchell to the Byrds, Love, the Turtles, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Buffalo Springfield, the Mamas and the Papas, the Doors, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, Linda Ronstadt, Gram Parsons, and more. They lived within weed-wafting distance from each other; crafted and recorded transcendent, genre-swirling, wildly successful music; threw all-night, epic soirees and pool parties (with ping pong tournaments!); stayed constantly baked; and got extremely laid.

Together, they would enshrine the moment folk went electric, seducing country, blues, jazz, classical and psychedelic rock as well—and everyone got Rolls-Royce rich off the windfall. (Literally, as shown in the documentary: Stephen Stills buys a Rolls Royce. The Mamas and the Papas buy three , and a couple Porsches. And the Eagles will out-earn them all.)

Ellwood uses audio-only interviews in lieu of on-camera shots of the musicians in the present day, a remarkable way of preserving this atmosphere without intruding on it. The mood A Place in Time gives us is a big, dreamy, horny one, not entirely unlike the one we all seem to be pining for today—whether we realize it or not.

This is an era when one could easily rent an entire house in Los Angeles and never lock the door—at least, until Charles Manson’s murderous followers chilled the city. Minds, we are reminded a half-dozen times by Jackson Browne, David Crosby and others, were routinely expanded, cracked open and blown, mostly due to some of the most potent weed then known to man. All of it was set against Insta-worthy backdrops we’d loosely refer to today as “goals.”

Laurel Canyon isn’t just about the neighborhood as seen through Ellwood’s eyes, shot as if every hour is the golden hour. It’s not just about the lifestyle recounted by its then-barely-adult participants, where drugs were free-flowing (Peter Tork of the Monkees once told Rolling Stone that kilos of weed were often casually dropped off in suitcases) and bodies even freer. It’s not just about the aesthetic, either, with its indoor-outdoor living vibe, garden patches, wild flowers, a flood of natural wood and light, and the calling card of young, modern decor, cacti.

It’s about what the landscape and its denizens fused, musically and personally, and the age-old tale of music scenes that build, peak, and flame out that keeps the story alive, which Ellwood gives us with a steady flow of matter-of-fact reflections.

This is where Neil Young moved to join Richie Furay’s band, Buffalo Springfield, on lead guitar with Stephen Stills, then left to form Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, then decided to go solo. Where Love—with its two black members, Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols—would be barred from touring the south, and struggle to match the success of peers like the Doors.

It’s where David Crosby would be kicked out of the Byrds, but first harmonize with Stills and Nash (at Joni Mitchell’s house? In Mama Cass’s living room: No one can remember; they were all too stoned). This is where Stills would lose a spot in the Monkees to Peter Tork—he had a snaggletooth execs didn’t love—while Tork, a nudist, threw fabulous parties. Women swam naked in Zappa’s duck pond in full view of Joni Mitchell’s living room. Everyone swapped copies of Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. The Mamas and Papas swapped partners a half-dozen ways. Sometimes Jimi Hendrix, Ringo, and George stopped by to jam.

Everyone fell for Joni Mitchell and/or her talents. The night Mama Cass brought Eric Clapton over to see her play, he sat gobsmacked. “I had the best pot in town,” Crosby says in the film. “I would give people a joint and they would get stoned, completely stoned out of their gourd. They’d listen to Joni play and their brains would run out their noses into a puddle on the floor, and that’d be that.” Crosby was in love with Mitchell, but Mitchell would fall for Graham Nash, before ghosting him via telegram. Also, at some point, Keith Richards maybe burned down a house.

“This was a good time to be starting a band,” Robby Krieger of the Doors remarks at one point, an incredible understatement. The live footage here, it must be said, is a fan’s dream: at one point in time, you could catch the Doors, Love and the Byrds on the same bill at a club that held no more than 500 people, or see Steve Martin do standup in a tiny club opening for Linda Ronstadt.

Laurel Canyon’s bubble would be slowly deflated by real life: the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the stabbing of 18-year-old black festivalgoer Meredith Hunter at Altamont by a Hells Angel, and the Manson murders. (For what it’s worth, Charles Manson tried to make it in a band in Laurel Canyon too. Unfortunately, they sucked.) Woodstock bisects the series. The second half of the doc (airing June 7) will take on the first five years or so of the ’70s and the second wave of residents, like Linda Ronstadt, J.D. Souther, and the Eagles—as well as coke’s swift dethroning of grass as the drug du jour.

Bands would come and go, and eventually, all that money would relocate the more successful Laurel Canyoners to wealthier enclaves like Bel Air. Notably, Don Henley explains in the film, the second that real money was on the table, those all-night jam sessions were abandoned—seen as opportunities to steal each other’s melodies.

The cash grab that ends Part One of Laurel Canyon is the only tipoff to what will become of Boomers and their eventual descent into crass, destructive consumerism. But those of us who aren’t of that generation should remember that we’re so disappointed in them largely because of beautiful moments like Laurel Canyon. The film emphasizes how at the time, Boomer ideals matched what any so-called woke person might care about in the present day. “Hippies,” Jackson Browne mentions at some point, may now be an easily mocked concept—but once upon a time, becoming a hippie meant “getting hip, opening up” to the world around you, turning on to the realities of injustice and human possibility.

From the Archive: It Happened in Laurel Canyon

Seeing these bands in peak, art-making collaboration, alongside near baby-faced photos, underlines something else: they’re kids, really, as naive about the world’s problems and solutions as they are prescient about music.

Ellwood isn’t telling us what to make of all this in the context of 2020, not any more than her subjects seem able to. They simply were as they were, and A Place in Time is merely a snapshot of a particularly fertile yet myopically flawed moment of youth culture. (Most of the good ones are both.)

“A writer can move time around,” Joni Mitchell says about halfway through Part One. “You can take incidents that happened over a span of 15 years and make them occur in one moment. Maybe the truth doesn’t rhyme.”

All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

— The Week the Cameras Stopped : TV in the COVID-19 Era — Why Natalie Wood’s Daughter Is Confronting Robert Wagner About Wood’s Death — Inside Rock Hudson’s Real-Life Relationship With Agent Henry Wilson — How The Mandalorian Fought to Keep Baby Yoda From Being Too Cute — A First Look at Charlize Theron’s Immortal Warrior in The Old Guard — Back to the Future, Uncut Gems, and More New Titles on Netflix This Month — From the Archive: How Rock Hudson and Doris Day Helped Define the Romantic Comedy

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Somewhere In Time: How A Time Travel Romance Starring Superman Found Its Fans

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Saturday, Oct. 3 marks the 40th anniversary of Somewhere in Time , a film that took one of the longest, weirdest journeys to popularity. It was savaged at the box office for being stodgy, overly romantic, and out of touch. But today, it's a cult favorite, beloved for the very qualities it was panned for. Its fan base includes retired 4-star General Colin Powell, a couple of FilmWeek critics, and me.

Here's the thumbnail: An elderly actress shows up at the premiere of a young playwright's new production. The playwright becomes obsessed with her and wills himself back in time 67 years to meet her as a young woman. They're kept apart by her manager, but get one perfect day and night together -- before he gets cruelly pulled back to the present and dies of a broken heart. They reunite in Heaven.

Christopher Reeve, fresh from Superman , is the playwright. Jane Seymour, then of Battlestar Galactica , is the actress. And Christopher Plummer, who had just killed as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree , is her controlling manager. The bestselling score was by John Barry, and it was directed by Jeannot Szwarc -- who had just saved Universal's butt by taking over Jaws 2 .

The TV and movie veteran -- whose directing credits range from a 1968 episode of Ironside to a 2019 episode of Grey's Anatomy -- is almost 81, and retired last year to France.

When I reached him there this summer, he said, "What I loved about Somewhere in Time was that there was very little sex, but there was a lot of love. It was really what the French call l'amour fou , a crazy love. You know, they don't make pictures like that anymore." When I responded, "They weren't making pictures like that in 1980," he laughed and said, "I know."

The screenplay is by Richard Matheson, adapted from his novel Bid Time Return , which he set at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego. It would have been convenient to Hollywood -- but because of the power lines, traffic noise, and modern buildings, Szwarc would have needed a time machine to shoot the 1912 scenes at the Hotel del.

Enter an actual time machine: Mackinac Island, off Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Once the center of the fur trade, they had buried their power lines, preserved their Victorian architecture, and banned cars. People get around by horse carriage and bike.

My dad was doing PR for the Island back then, so I grew up spending much of the summer there. But unlike pretty much everyone else on the Island, I didn't get to be an extra in the film.

Mackinac also has a giant Victorian hotel -- Grand Hotel, built in 1887. Back in the day, wealthy Chicagoans went there in the summer to escape the heat. But of course, the Somewhere in Time team had to do their site visit in February. During one of the coldest winters on record. With the Great Lakes frozen from shore to shore.

Szwarc and producer Stephen Deutsch (now Stephen Simon) were being towed around the Island by islander Dan Dewey, who went on to become location manager for the film. At one point, he drove 100 yards out onto the ice so the two men -- who he said looked like they were wearing the entire stock of an Eddie Bauer store -- could get a good look at the Grand

Szwarc turned to Dewey and Simon and asked innocently, "Where is the water?" Both of them say nothing, but point down to the ice. "Oh," says the director, realizing he's standing over 100 feet of 32.1-degree water. "Can we go now?"

Even under a blanket of snow, they can see that the Island is the perfect location for the movie -- but they're still 2,400 miles from Hollywood.

"We were about to leave and Jeannot and I were talking," Simon said. "We can't shoot the rooms in the hotel," because they will be occupied by guests. "That needs to be a set. There's no place to build a set here!"

"Well you might be wrong about that," Dewey said.

Islander Trish Martin picks up the story:

"There was an organization that had its world headquarters on Mackinac Island known as Moral Re-Armament. You may not have heard of them, but you might've heard of some of their offshoots, including Alcoholics Anonymous and Up with People. They made a lot of films, along with doing roadshows and so on, and they had a full film studio: editing rooms, a big soundstage, and the whole bit."

Trish was actually in a crowd scene in Decision at Midnight , an MRA production with Martin Landau that was shot on the island in 1963.

The complex also had enough rooms for the cast and crew, solving another of the headaches from when you make a movie on a remote resort island in the middle of high season. It was kismet, and with the exception of a few early shots in Chicago, where the movie starts, the rest was shot on Mackinac from late May to late July of 1979.

They wrapped the production only 9 days over schedule, and went back to California. Everything had gone so well; nobody anticipated the cruel fate awaiting the little romantic picture they put so much love into.

But before we go there... let's talk about how the movie handles time travel. As he's obsessing about the actress, Reeve is told by a professor -- played by George Voskovec, who was one of the jurors in Twelve Angry Men , -- that you can will yourself back in time.

In the realm of time travel movies, self-hypnosis must be one of the simplest methods. The polar opposite Avengers: Endgame, which improbably namechecked Somewhere in Time during the Hulk's big explanation of how time travel works.

Getting namechecked in the biggest movie of the millennium was such a big moment for us Somewhere in Time fans, I had to call up Avengers screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Were they big fans? No -- McFeely says it was just a list of time travel movies they included in a reshoot.

"We found that we really needed to just spend something like two minutes having the Hulk tell people that's not how it works in this movie. We just called out the elephant in the room: other time travel movies, which were sort of getting in the audience's way."

"We got all tangled up in whether there were consequences or no consequences. If it's all in your head there's no consequences, you can do what you want," Markus said.

The two -- the most successful screenwriters in history -- actually sounded a little jealous that Somewhere in Time 's time travel method could be sketched out on a cocktail napkin, while you need a spreadsheet for Endgame .

Let's time travel ourselves, back to 1980. When last we left our heroes, they had just wrapped what was by all accounts a very happy shoot, and it seemed like the stars were aligned for a success for Somewhere in Time . On the strength of two rapturous previews, Universal gave it wide release.

But because of a strike, the stars couldn't support the film they made. And then came the reviews.

Leonard Maltin: Stilted dialogue, corny situations, pretty scenery. Roger Ebert: The movie surrounds its love story with such boring mumbo jumbo about time travel that we finally just don't care. Vincent Canby: Somewhere in Time ... does for time-travel what the Hindenburg did for dirigibles.

"Jerry was in love with Somewhere in Time . Not only did he run it, sometimes he ran it twice in the same night. That started the ball. And then, HBO in their early early days were not buying blockbusters because they couldn't afford it. So , what did HBO program? Movies that hadn't worked out well at the box office."

The second man was Bill Shepard, whom producer Simon says did more for Somewhere in Time 's eventual success than any other person. Bill told me how he discovered the movie that would change his life.

"I was going with a very nice lady from Saint Paul," Shepard said. "She was actually the one who suggested going to the movies. I sat there for 103 minutes literally enchanted. I'd never seen a movie like that before that affected me like that. And as the two of us were walking out of the theater, she turned to me and said, 'Well, that didn't do that much for me. How about you?'"

The lady soon left Shepard's life, but the movie stayed in his heart. In 1990, he started INSITE: the International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts . And the next year, realizing the huge number of people who wanted a deeper experience, he organized the first Somewhere in Time weekend on Mackinac.

In a story filled with time travel, this weekend gathering is yet another time machine. Think of it as a Comic-Con, but where cosplayers get to actually be in Hyrule on the hunt for Ganon , or ride in a real Totoro cat bus . At the end of October each year, Somewhere in Time fans take the ferry to Mackinac, dress in period-correct clothes, act out scenes from the movie, and see the shooting locations -- led by our old friend the snowmobile driver, Dan Dewey.

This is not like a con where a grumpy Lou Ferrigno charges for autographs . The cast and crew love the weekends at the Grand just as much as the fans. As Steve Hellerstein, the movie's transportation captain, told me, "this has made my film career complete. I finally did a film that is recognized... and I'm recognized." Just like the stars, he's invited to and feted at the Somewhere in Time weekends. (Steve Hellerstein died Aug. 8 at the age of 73.)

Jane Seymour attended last year, for the third time -- and her co-star, Christopher Reeve, came in 1994. There's video of the event , and you can see him practically bouncing on the stage taking questions from the audience.

And when someone asks him where "Somewhere in Time" ranks among all the movies he made, he delivers an off-the-cuff monologue that sums up an actor's life.

"This holds the prime place by the fireside in my heart. This is the one that I have the greatest gratitude for. It's very hard to perform and do your work, where you put your emotions forward for the camera, for people to see... and then have it greeted officially by the sound of one hand clapping. And that people found this move and said, 'Wait a minute! It didn't deserve the fate that it got. It didn't deserve to be treated that way.' It moves me more than you can know."

"I romanticize this movie ridiculously," he said. "My wife and I saw the movie for the first time in 1981 [the year they got married]. We loved it because we looked at it and I think we saw ourselves in it. Just married and bananas in love, and passionate about each other the way they are in the film. So that colored what I felt and thought about the film my entire life. I watched it again recently and it made me tear up in all the same places, and it made me long for my wife, who I lost in 2013 to cancer."

Justin Chang, critic for Fresh Air and the L.A. Times , told me, "One of the reasons Somewhere in Time has endured is because it has the courage of its absurd convictions." As he wrote in Variety in 2013:

Ludicrous and irresistible, Somewhere in Time belongs to a long and glorious tradition of love stories ... in which time travel serves as a crucial narrative element and structuring device. It is a genre whose charms I've found myself unusually susceptible to in recent years. ... Wildly romantic, brazenly paradoxical and stubbornly resistant to the rules of logic, these films rely for their effect on a blissful surrender of reason. To dismiss them as ridiculous or implausible is to miss both the point and the pleasure.

As Shakespeare wrote in Richard II , "O call back yesterday. Bid time return," because all the "life" stuff eventually happened to me -- some of it quite brutally. And as the years passed, more and more I appreciated the corny themes of Somewhere in Time . And more and more I understood why older people tell and retell the stories from their past.

In his memoir Hand to Mouth , the novelist Paul Auster wrote, "Reach a certain moment in your life, and you discover that your days are spent as much with the dead as they are with the living." To that, I would only add, "And I'm OK with that."

KPCC's John Rabe is the host of the new podcast Call Back Yesterday , which explores how the themes of Somewhere in Time intersect with the lives of his guests and him. The first episode features FilmWeek's Tim Cogshell.

Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated Jeannot Szwarc's age. LAist regrets the error.

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Places in the heart, common sense media reviewers.

Inspiring, intense tale about hardship, bigotry, redemption.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Presents a textured look at The Great Depression u

Affirms that families comes in all sizes, shapes,

Edna, the heroine, is observed on a life-changing

A sheriff is shot and killed by a young African-Am

Several scenes reveal that a couple is having an e

Occasional swearing: "hell," "son o

Wine is consumed in a religious service. Set in th

Parents need to know that Places in the Heart is set in Texas during The Great Depression and shows a community dealing with poverty, lack of hope, and racial prejudice. Important messages about family, compassion, and respect for individual differences are effectively delivered. Several dramatic sequences…

Educational Value

Presents a textured look at The Great Depression using the story of one family and the surrounding community in Texas. Details racial prejudice as well as the hard-scrabble life.

Positive Messages

Affirms that families comes in all sizes, shapes, and colors; people are bound together for a "common good" with love and mutual respect. Values promoted are: teamwork, forgiveness, compassion, and ethical behavior.

Positive Role Models

Edna, the heroine, is observed on a life-changing journey: from sheltered, loving wife and mother to a woman of great independence, strength, perseverance, and resourcefulness, one who never abandons her loving nature and sense of humanity. In addition, several featured players (including a blind man) have transformative experiences. Racial prejudice is an integral story element; the central African-American character is multi-faceted and positively impacts the lives of many people.

Violence & Scariness

A sheriff is shot and killed by a young African-American man; his body is seen in various scenes. The young man is shown hanging in revenge. Ku Klux Klansmen beat up a well-liked character. In a tense, suspenseful sequence a violent storm and tornado wreak havoc in a town; children and adults are threatened; a dead body is observed from a distance having been crushed during the disturbance.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Several scenes reveal that a couple is having an extramarital affair. Their romance is prominent subsidiary story; they're seen after sex, embracing, caressing. . A woman is shown in a bath; no nudity.

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Occasional swearing: "hell," "son of a bitch." Multiple racial slurs, including the "N" word used repeatedly.

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Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Wine is consumed in a religious service. Set in the 1930s, smoking is seen throughout; a young boy smokes, but is caught and punished.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Places in the Heart is set in Texas during The Great Depression and shows a community dealing with poverty, lack of hope, and racial prejudice. Important messages about family, compassion, and respect for individual differences are effectively delivered. Several dramatic sequences are suspenseful and scary (a shooting, a beating, a turbulent storm); other scenes dealing with the bigotry of the time are highly charged and unsettling (the "N" word is used). Though outcomes are inspirational and prove that human goodness and ingenuity are rewarded, there are sad moments (spoiler alert: a father is killed; a young African-American is lynched; a violent storm threatens a town). A sub-plot concerns an adulterous relationship (some kissing, embracing, no nudity). Characters smoke; wine is used in a religious ceremony. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 3 parent reviews

Takes It Place Among The Better Films Of The 80s

Great movie heartfelt and period piece, what's the story.

When her husband is unexpectedly killed, Edna Spalding ( Sally Field ) must deal with her profound grief, sudden full responsibility for her two children, and the realities of poverty in the midst of the Depression of the mid-1930s. PLACES IN THE HEART takes the previously sheltered Edna on an astonishing journey toward independence, maturity, and self-reliance. Her reconstituted Texas family, which includes an itinerant African-American thief and an embittered blind victim of The Great War, join in her struggle to save her home and her ideals from greedy business interests, natural disaster, and prejudice.

Is It Any Good?

Nominated for seven Academy Awards (with wins for Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay), this film has a heartfelt story and insightful messages about compassion, integrity, and perseverance. In addition to Sally Fields' strong, nuanced performance as Edna, writer/director Robert Benton has created a tapestry of richly-defined characters in the community around her. Places in the Heart 's standout performances are delivered by Lindsay Crouse , Danny Glover , John Malkovich , Ed Harris , and Amy Madigan . Seeing this sincere recreation of Mr. Benton's hometown and its people during the challenging Depression era will likely be an enlightening and moving experience for older kids, teens, and their families.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can discuss the unique nature of Edna's "new" family in Places in the Heart . How does that reflect the variety of family structures in the United States today?

Use Edna's experience with the bank and Moze's encounters with the cotton merchant as examples of prejudices against both women and racial minorities. How much has changed since the events in this movie? Do you think we have further to go? .Why?

Did the film's ending have a major impact on you? What do you think the filmmaker's intention was? What did they want you to take away from this movie?

How do the characters in Places in the Heart demonstrate compassion , perseverance , and teamwork ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 21, 1984
• On DVD or streaming : October 9, 2001
• Cast : Sally Field , Danny Glover , John Malkovich
• Director : Robert Benton
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : TriStar Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 111 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• Award : Academy Award
• Last updated : June 23, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Exploring the Iconic Filming Locations of Somewhere in Time

By Happy Sharer

An Overview of Where Somewhere in Time was Filmed

The 1980 romantic time-travel movie Somewhere in Time is an iconic film that has stood the test of time. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, the movie follows Richard Collier (Reeve) as he travels back in time to 1912 to be reunited with his true love Elise McKenna (Seymour). The movie was filmed primarily in Michigan, with some scenes also filmed in California.

Exploring the Locations Used to Film Somewhere in Time

The most iconic location used to film Somewhere in Time is the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Mackinac Island is an idyllic spot located in Lake Huron between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. The island is famous for its Victorian-era architecture, horse-drawn carriages, and fudge shops. The Grand Hotel, which was built in 1887, provides a spectacular backdrop for the movie’s romantic scenes.

Another important filming location for Somewhere in Time was the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan. The university’s auditorium and library were used for several scenes in the movie. The opening scene of the movie was filmed at the university’s Beaumont Tower. Other filming locations used for Somewhere in Time include the Historic Holly Hotel in Holly, Michigan; the Mission Inn in Riverside, California; and the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco, California.

A Tour of the Movie Sets from Somewhere in Time

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island served as the primary setting for Somewhere in Time. The hotel’s lobby and dining room were both used in the movie, along with the hotel’s beautiful grounds and gardens. Many of the interior shots of the hotel were filmed in the hotel’s ballroom, which has since been renamed the “Christopher Reeve Ballroom” in honor of the actor.

The Michigan State University campus was used for several scenes in Somewhere in Time. The university’s auditorium and library were both used in the movie, as well as the Beaumont Tower, which can be seen in the opening scene. The university’s campus also provided the backdrop for the movie’s climactic scene.

Other sets used in Somewhere in Time include the Historic Holly Hotel, which was used for exteriors of the hotel; the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, which provided the backdrop for the opening scene; and the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, which was used for the movie’s finale.

The Making of Somewhere in Time: Behind the Scenes of the Film’s Production

Before production began on Somewhere in Time, the cast and crew spent months preparing for the shoot. The script was rewritten numerous times, and the cast and crew had to familiarize themselves with the locations they would be using. The production team spent months scouting out locations and finding the perfect spots for each scene.

During production, the cast and crew faced a number of challenges. They had to contend with the unpredictable weather on Mackinac Island, and the budget constraints meant that they had to make do without some of the equipment they had originally planned to use. But despite these obstacles, the cast and crew were able to create a beautiful and timeless movie.

Post-production was a lengthy process, as the filmmakers had to edit and add special effects to the footage they had captured. The editing process was especially challenging, as the filmmakers had to ensure that the film fit within the two-hour time limit. Finally, the movie was completed and released in October 1980.

Revisiting the Iconic Filming Locations of Somewhere in Time

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island remains one of the most iconic filming locations of Somewhere in Time. The hotel has become a popular destination for fans of the movie, and visitors can still experience the beauty and romance of the Grand Hotel just as it appeared in the movie.

Michigan State University is another popular destination for fans of the movie. Visitors can take a tour of the university’s campus and visit the iconic locations used in the movie, including the Beaumont Tower and the auditorium. There is even a bronze plaque on the university’s campus commemorating the filming of Somewhere in Time.

Other filming locations used for Somewhere in Time remain largely unchanged. The Historic Holly Hotel still stands, and the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers continue to provide stunning backdrops for the movie’s finale.

How the Cast and Crew of Somewhere in Time Brought the Story to Life on Screen

The cast and crew of Somewhere in Time worked together to bring the story to life on screen. Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour shared a special chemistry, and their performances brought the characters of Richard and Elise to life. The crew worked tirelessly to capture the beauty and romance of the movie’s settings, and the filmmakers ensured that every detail was perfect.

The cast and crew faced many challenges during production, but they persevered and succeeded in creating a beautiful and timeless movie. The movie has been praised for its powerful story, captivating performances, and stunning visuals, and it has become a beloved classic.

Somewhere in Time is a movie that has stood the test of time. Its iconic filming locations, including the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and the Michigan State University campus, have become popular destinations for fans of the movie. The cast and crew worked together to create a beautiful and timeless movie, and its impact can still be felt today.

(Note: Is this article not meeting your expectations? Do you have knowledge or insights to share? Unlock new opportunities and expand your reach by joining our authors team. Click Registration to join us and share your expertise with our readers.)

Hi, I'm Happy Sharer and I love sharing interesting and useful knowledge with others. I have a passion for learning and enjoy explaining complex concepts in a simple way.

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32 Movies Great Movies About Time Travel With Completely Different Rules

Prepare for some serious stipulations.

Is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie? Some of the best sci-fi movies in history have tackled this frequently explored topic, and new wrinkles in the fabric of the concept have made the subject more exciting over time. So why don’t we take a look at the different rules these flights of fancy have introduced? Should you be stuck in a time loop, we apologize if this list is starting to get old.

Back To The Future

Everyone loves to talk about how Back to the Future’s time travel works , but there’s one aspect we take for granted throughout the whole trilogy. Doc Brown ( Christopher Lloyd ) may have given Marty McFly ( Michael J. Fox ) the keys to travel through the past, present, and future; but you seriously need to consider the exact spot you’re traveling to. Otherwise, you might find yourself altering history in some intriguing ways. R.I.P. Twin Pines Mall. 

Time After Time

A novel adventure starring the father of time travel H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), Time After Time actually introduced an interesting mechanic to temporal transport. Let’s just say that if you don’t use the Time Machine properly, you could find yourself stuck in your final destination. Or worse, falling through the time-space continuum, without a way back home.

The Terminator

The Terminator's time travel will forever be a head-scratcher, as the existence of John Connor is the ultimate ontological paradox. How else can you explain Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) being sent back to the 1980s to save the world…and make sure the person who sent him is born in the first place?

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The oldest method of time travel in the Star Trek movies, 1986’s The Voyage Home saw Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and his crew trying to save the whales through a time heist. This wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the Enterprise crew using a Klingon Bird of Prey, a slingshot orbit around the sun, and a lot of engineering power to do it.

2004’s Primer is still hotly discussed among time travel aficionados, and it’s not hard to see why. The shenanigans in this test case involve multiple versions of a singular traveler (Shane Carruth) existing in a single timeline, which creates one of the most chaotic timelines ever depicted.

The Adam Project

Story-wise, The Adam Project is pretty cozy when it comes to how it handles time travel. But when it comes to traveling in style, the older Adam Reed ( Ryan Reynolds ) has a Time Jet that’s specifically coded to his DNA! Not many temporal travelers HAVE that, and it prevents so many mistakes other adventures of this sort use for story purposes.

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Avengers: Endgame

How Avengers: Endgame’s time travel works is rather unorthodox, to be honest. Instead of overwriting the past into a more pleasing result, the MCU’s finest are only allowed to use it in the name of stealing/returning the Infinity Stones. Timelines can still create tangent histories, and 2014 Gamora takes over for her slain variant in the films, but you can’t stop “The Snap.”

Lost In Space

If all time travelers had the device Older Will Robinson (Jared Harris) built in 1998’s Lost in Space , they’d have it made. While only one person can travel at a time, exact coordinates in time and space are required; so you can go to a very specific spatial location on the timeline. 

The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect's time travel works on rules similar to that of Quantum Leap . Evan ( Ashton Kutcher ) can indeed change history, but it’s only within his own life’s timeline. Unfortunately, thanks to the multiple trips leading to continued alterations to the fabric of events, it all adds up in terms of severe physical wear and tear. 

Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine is a very special case when it comes to time travel. To be fair, the comedy ensemble franchise gets points for having its protagonists travel only within their own bodies. As for how one can actually travel with said titular device, apparently you need an energy drink, the right hot tub with the right temperature, and some convenient writing. 

Real-time bodily damage. That’s probably one of the most unique additions to Looper’s usage of time travel , as we see people incur damage in the past, only for it to show up on their future selves. Poor Seth ( Paul Dano ) demonstrated that lesson the hard way in Rian Johnson ’s sci-fi masterpiece. 

Star Trek: Generations

What if you could wish really hard to create an alternate timeline? Or what if you could send yourself back to your best memory, and never leave? That’s what The Nexus from Star Trek: Generations could do, and both Captains Kirk (William Shatner) and Picard ( Patrick Stewart ) got a taste of that sweet life, before ultimately using their new power to stop the villainous Dr. Soren (Malcolm McDowell). 

Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure

If you ever want to bring a figure from history home for dinner in the present, do it in the universe of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure . There are little to no consequences, especially when it comes to our heroes (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) whisking away two medieval princesses to become betrothed in the 1980s. Seriously, how did that not start a war?

The Time Traveler's Wife

“Chrono Impairment” is a seriously rare affliction, but it’s enough of a headache that it prevents Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana’s clock-crossed lovers from ever enjoying a normal life. Such is the nature of The Time Traveler's Wife , which invented that affliction to send Bana’s character Henry on unpredictable trips at unforeseeable intervals throughout his life. 

Indiana Jones And Dial Of Destiny

For Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's time travel to actually happen, the world of Harrison Ford’s iconic archeologist needed specific hardware. Aided by some very precise calculations to try and take the Nazis to where they were trying to go, it wasn't as simple as jumping into a car and gunning it to 88 miles per hour. 

Star Trek: First Contact

For a franchise that uses temporal transit as much as the Star Trek series does, there sure are a lot of different ways to go back in time. And if you’re not satisfied with The Voyage Home’s method of a slingshot orbit around the Sun, then you can always do what Star Trek: First Contact did. While I wouldn’t personally recommend waiting for a Borg invasion to cause a temporal wake you can just hitch a ride on; you do you. 

Ok, so technically Tenet’s shenanigans involving time is “time inversion,” rather than time travel. Which only makes the journey, and the resulting reality The Protagonist (John David Washington) lives in all the more complicated. It also makes for some classic Christopher Nolan mind melts.

Would this really be a sci-fi party if author Michael Crichton didn’t show up? Timeline’s time travel is a lot of fun, if you consider using a “human fax machine” to send yourself to medieval times “fun.” In which case, try not to abuse it too much, as every trip has the chance to leave you with transcription errors in your reassembled DNA. Again, we’re working with a fax machine here.  

Somewhere In Time

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for Christopher Reeve fans! Somewhere in Time just had to be on this list, as it's pretty unique in how it sends a person back through the ages. In the case of Reeve’s playwright Richard, all he needs is a really powerful hypnotic focus to zoom back to 1912. 

Star Trek (2009)

It’s kind of fitting that the 2009 Star Trek reboot would use time travel, given that the series has continually danced with that concept on TV and in movies. For this J.J. Abrams-directed venture, the destructive and inexact force of a black hole is what’s used to accidentally alter time so vastly that William Shatner turns into Chris Pine.

Déjà Vu

Tony Scott’s 2006 action-thriller Déjà Vu is a big movie with a relatively limited scope. With intelligence gathering, and ultimately one human transport, that can only go as far back as four and a half days, Denzel Washington’s work was kind of cut out for him on this caper.

The Tomorrow War

The Chris Pratt-starring time travel ensemble adventure The Tomorrow War has some pretty huge stipulations when it comes to recruiting an army for the future. The largest among them was, of course, you had to be dead according to the records of the future hellscape that pitted humanity against some very nasty creatures.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past

Going from here to there in the then and now in X-Men: Days of Future Past requires a serious amount of power. With Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) going back to his past body, the key to how it all happens lies in the phasing abilities of Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page). So this story uses a very physical, and incredibly vulnerable, method to execute its vision.

Out of all the time travel universes we’ve seen on screen, perhaps the one I feel the most sorry for is the one shown in 12 Monkeys . The basic rule of this Bruce Willis epic’s temporal transit is “hope for the best,” thanks to the method of being shot through time and intending to land in the right place going wrong more often than you think.

Midnight In Paris

Reminiscent of many other vehicular-based time travel films like Back to the Future , any character that travels through time in Midnight In Paris just needs to catch the right ride, at just about Midnight. The experience is bespoke to whoever is traveling, as the period of time that suits them best also dictates the method of transportation provided.

The Final Countdown

Dropping an aircraft carrier from the 1980s into the moments before Pearl Harbor, The Final Countdown delivers a moral dilemma plenty of time travelers have tangled with. But the real difference with this underrated sci-fi movie is the fact that the time-traveling storm that is responsible for the trip is inescapable. You’re going home, whether you want to or not.

Sharing a similarity with the romantic classic Somewhere In Time , Richard Curtis’ About Time allows any potential traveler to jump into the past with merely intense concentration. However, certain caveats are in play, like the recommendation of not traveling past certain life milestones, or the fact that only the men of the Lake family can actually use this gift.

Donnie Darko

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) can’t exactly travel through time in Donnie Darko , but he does have a special temporal ability that’s kind of funny and kind of sad. With the ability to open a wormhole between the present and the past, Mr. Darko can send objects through time; the skill that gives Richard Kelly’s movie its bittersweet ending. 

Kate & Leopold

Kate & Leopold’s usage of a localized time portal is a method as old as time. However, the big difference with this Meg Ryan/Hugh Jackman rom-com is that the journey Leopold (Jackman) takes to the “future” of 2001 robs us all of elevators. Also, there’s a ticking clock on this specific portal’s usage, which only complicates things further.

Groundhog Day

Perhaps the movie that nailed the time loop into the consciousness of the world, Groundhog Day brought us a charming Bill Murray rom-com mixed with a time travel story. Its misanthropic lead needed to change, even as the world around him stayed the same. The rest was sci-fi history in the making. 

Happy Death Day

What happens if you make a Groundhog Day-style time loop into a deadly game? You get a movie like Happy Death Day , in which our initially unlikable lead Tree (Jessica Rothe) is being stalked through a single-day time loop. The big kicker in this variant is that, unlike your standard time loop, Tree has a finite number of cycles before she possibly dies for good.

Where does one start with director Joseph Kahn’s Detention? Well, how about the fact that the teenagers in play (including a pre- Hunger Games Josh Hutcherson) use a stuffed bear as a time travel capsule? Or the fact that a mother/daughter pair can body swap on a permanent basis, and with no consequences? 

And with that, our supreme sampling of time travel trips has come to a close. Which more than likely has left you with a want to watch some of these movies again, or for the first time. That's totally natural, because this is a subgenre that always leaves us with one question: is there ever a bad time to watch a time travel movie?

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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Would you like to know the day you will die? It’s a tricky thought exercise. What if you find out you’ll die at a ripe old age? That sure would make retirement investing and travel plans easier. But what if the news was grim? That you’ll die within the year – before you’ve had the chance to meet that special someone or take that dream vacation? What then? Do you live your life to its fullest or mope and fret over what’s left? What’s a man like Mortimer the mortician to do? 

“ Running on Empty ” (not to be confused with the far superior Sidney Lumet film or the catchy Jackson Browne song of the same name) begins with that playful premise yet quickly falls apart with repeated jokes and bits that grow stiff with each unfunny use, dead-eyed performances that looks like even the cast knew this movie was D.O.A., dialogue so mind-numbingly dull, it would have been painful to overhear in a coffee shop, let alone for almost 90 minutes. There’s almost nothing to savor from this movie past its initial premise, and, like a funeral that drags on in the summer heat, takes far too long to get to its inevitable conclusion. 

Mortimer ( Keir Gilchrist ) is a mortician (sorry, funeral director) following in the family business in the San Fernando Valley with his slightly creepy uncle Barry ( Jim Gaffigan ). After Mort buys a house with his conventionally hot fiancée Nicole ( Francesca Eastwood ), the pair visit a clinic to find out their death date. The good news for Nicole is she’s expected to live many more decades. The bad news for Mort is that he’s going to die within the year. Nicole dumps him, setting him on a wayward quest to figure out how to make the best of his remaining time on Earth. Along the way, he meets the sympathetic Kate ( Lucy Hale ) and a nightmarish pimp named Simon ( Rhys Coiro ), who frequently returns to shakedown Mort for more money. 

Written and directed by Daniel André , “Running on Empty” delivers little enjoyment for a romantic comedy. The premise is the most charming aspect of the movie, but as Mort’s misadventures start to stack up, like rounds of painfully awkward speed dating with LA’s worst bachelorettes and repeated tiresome visits from Simon, the charm wears off as Mort’s precious time on earth drips away like sweat in the heat. André must find humor in the tedium of bad experiences because he buries his character under the weight of one bad night after another. While “Running on Empty” may hold some hints of Martin Scorsese ’s “ After Hours ,” it lacks the energy and ingenuity to make Mort’s race against time and death feel urgent or even poignant in any significant way. 

As Mort, Gilchrist seems rather unmoved by his character’s predicament. Even in his most passionate or frustrated moments, his line deliveries feel flat, like a pulse that barely registers. I can’t tell if the main character is supposed to be played this off-key flat for a laugh or if it was so underwritten Gilchrist gave up on injecting any life into the role. But he looked bored, and I, in turn, felt bored. 

By design, Nicole is also a relatively shallow character, but Kate is written like a Ramona Flowers tribute, minus any kind of self-reflection or emotional backstory. However, Hale at least tries to add some levity to the story, a feat not even Gaffigan’s Barry or Jay Pharoah (as Mort’s co-worker Sid) can pull off. She’s lively and effervescent in a movie where most of the cast looks like they’re sleepwalking. It’s not enough to save the movie or its dialogue, but it’s some sign of life. 

Unfortunately, “Running on Empty” is one of those failed comedies that never quite achieve liftoff. Between the lackluster performances, dead-end jokes, gross humor, unremarkable visual style, and bon mots like “Simon says…,” I could feel my own mortality slipping away. With little to offer for its screen time, “Running on Empty” lives up to its title. 

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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Running on Empty (2024)

Keir Gilchrist as Mort

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• <i>It Ends With Us</i> Can’t Quite Turn Trauma into Drama

It Ends With Us Can’t Quite Turn Trauma into Drama

A movie or book can address a serious, emotionally wrenching subject and still be a thing you can’t help snickering at, a dramatic pileup that leaves you muttering “Oh, come on!” under your breath. It Ends With Us , the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover ’s ferociously popular 2016 novel, works hard to ping all the appropriate notes. This is after all, a story of domestic abuse, a more widely shared experience in real life than most of us want to face up to. (Hoover has said that the book was inspired by her mother, who was physically abused by Hoover’s father.) And the objective reality is that we need movies like It Ends With Us . The classic genre known as the woman’s film—pictures like King Vidor’s 1937 Stella Dallas, or either version of Imitation of Life, filmed first by John Stahl in 1934 and later, in 1959, by Douglas Sirk—thrived in the ’30s, ’40s, and beyond by carving out a safe space for emotional catharsis . Women, and sometimes men, often need to cry it all out, and aren’t the movies—a refuge in the dark—the perfect place to do that?

But It Ends With Us —directed by Justin Baldoni, who also co-stars—doesn’t have the mojo to get the waterworks pumping, not even in a gentle, reserved way. Blake Lively stars as the kookily named Lily Bloom, a thoughtful young woman with a hippie-patchwork wardrobe and a guardedly bright outlook on life. She lives in Boston; she’s about to open her own flower shop, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. In all ways, this is a period of transition. Her father has just died, and she’s not sure what to do with her mixed feelings; as we learn more about the way he abused Lily’s mother, and others, we understand why. Lily has just returned from the funeral, held in her Maine hometown, and with her jumbled thoughts, she has stolen away to a Boston rooftop with a dreamy view. But she doesn’t actually live in the building. And when a handsome neurosurgeon, who is a resident, blusters his way onto that rooftop, you get the sense her life will be changed forever.

His name is Ryle Kincaid—he’s played by Baldoni—and he's almost criminally handsome, with his sympathetic dark eyes and 10 o’clock shadow, even sexier than the 5 o’clock kind. He’s just got to be a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and in the first minutes of their meeting, it sure seems that way. The two find themselves engaged in the kind of disarmingly frank conversation that can often brew between strangers. He’s had a terrible day; she’s just lost her father, a man she loved despite the fact he might not have deserved it. Ryle listens to her, but he also tells her, “I want to have sex with you,” clearly taken with her haute-hippie-girl breeziness, which glows even through her conflicted grief. And though she calls him out, rightly, on his perhaps overly direct sales pitch, they almost do sleep together—until he’s called away to work. Because a handsome neurosurgeon’s work is never done.

Lily thinks that’s the end of it. A day or so later she gets the keys to her new shop and sets about sprucing it up, both hiring a helper and making a new friend on the same day: rich lady Allysa (the always-wonderful Jenny Slate , who breathes some life into the movie whenever she’s on-screen) just happens to stop in. She wants a job; trusting her instincts, Lily gives her one. The two become fast friends. And guess what? It turns out that semi-scary Dr. McDreamy, AKA Ryle, is Allysa's brother. What are the odds?

Though Allysa offers a few subtle warnings about Ryle’s romantic history , he and Lily fall in love anyway. Sure, he’s a player. But he makes it clear he wants to try for a real relationship with Lily. She goes for it—and then a love from her teenage years, whom we’ve previously met in flashbacks, unexpectedly steps into the frame. Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), is now a handsome but down-to-earth Boston restaurateur, and when Lily spots him, we can see there's still a spark between the two. But Lily has already earned Ryle’s trust; she decides to stay the course.

Until this point, It Ends With Us could be your classic but not-too-heavy romantic melodrama , replete with hot but tender sex and dashes of romantic befuddlement. But if you’ve read Hoover’s book , you’ll know what’s coming. Lily herself becomes the victim of domestic abuse, and it doesn’t arrive with loud warning bells. In fact, the first time Lily is injured, resulting in a bruised eye she attempts to conceal with makeup, the event is presented as an accident triggered by a scuffle to remove a burned frittata from the oven. It could happen to anyone. But the second incident is more clear-cut, and the third is unequivocally violent. Still, you look at Ryle, as Lily seems to, as possibly fixable. He’s suffering; his inner turmoil is causing him to act out. The movie is accurate and effective in this sense: for so many abused women, you never know how bad it can get, until it gets really bad.

Yet none of that is enough to make you fully buy what the movie’s selling. Lively has been terrific in other movies: her turn in the 2016 woman-vs.-shark thriller The Shallows was one of the great scream-queen performances of the last decade, and she showed nervy gravitas in Ben Affleck’s The Town. But It Ends With Us lets her down. The men, with their flaws—even kind, stalwart Atlas has a very short fuse, a yellow flag if not a red one—are far more interesting than Lily is. That doesn’t give them the right to inflict violence; but from a dramatic standpoint, it certainly makes them more electric. As Lively plays her, Lily is a blank, glassy surface, the better to reflect the shortcomings of the men around her; that’s not the same as being a person. Even by the movie’s end, she still feels like something of a muted stranger—it’s the men who come off as fully alive, as dangerous as one of them may be.

The problem, maybe, is that It Ends With Us is all about what it’s about, and nothing more. These characters exist to make points about the insidiousness of domestic violence, the way its effects can creep up invisibly even as those who are suffering cloak themselves in protective denial. Admittedly, that’s a lot for a movie to carry. But movies can’t just be efficient feeling-delivery systems; they have to work on us in subtler ways. It Ends With Us makes all its points, all right, but in a way that’s more edifying than moving. And despite the prettiness of its Boston setting, it isn’t as visually alluring as it should be. For one thing, this is a movie about a flower-loving florist that’s embarrassingly low on flowers, except for a few droopy, half-dead Victorian-looking things. It’s OK, even in a story addressing a traumatic subject, to dab a little color here and there. Flowers, their short-lived beauty notwithstanding, can often brighten even the bleakest day. In this movie, they're treated like something we don't deserve, a blessing closed up tight, instead of a thing worth living for.

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Where Alien: Romulus Fits in the Franchise's Timeline

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The prometheus duology is the beginning of the alien timeline, the classic alien series is set less than 2 decades after the prometheus duology, when does alien: romulus take place, are the alien vs. predator movies canon.

• Prometheus marks the beginning of the Alien timeline, set before Alien: Romulus.
• The classic Alien series events occur 18 years before Alien: Romulus.
• Alien: Romulus takes place 20 years post-Alien, bridging the gap to Aliens.

The Alien franchise is one of the most successful and popular science fiction movie franchises of all time, with the property being a pop-cultural phenomenon ever since the Ridley Scott original. Though it began in the 1970s, the series and its timeline are still going strong. This is culminating in the release of the upcoming Alien: Romulus , which is -- and isn't -- the next entry in the franchise.

Far from straightforward, the Alien movies and their spinoffs have a somewhat confusing chronology. This was compounded by the movie Prometheus , which some viewers initially didn't even realize was related to Alien . Alien: Romulus may end up making said continuity even more convoluted, though it's possibly the best chance that the series has at a fresh jumping on point.

Updated by Timothy Blake Donohoo on August 6, 2024: Alien: Romulus is now about to hit theaters, with the highly-anticipated film already the most hyped entry in the franchise in years. Thus, fans who are making their own rewatch will wonder how the Alien: Romulus timeline lines up with the rest of the franchise. Finding out when Alien: Romulus is set is important in terms of understanding the series' chronological order, especially given the placement of certain prequels and spinoffs.

Facehuggers Take Over New York in Brilliant Alien: Romulus Marketing Stunt

After invading San Diego Comic-Con, the facehuggers head to New York in the latest marketing stunt to promote Alien: Romulus.

Though it was released over 30 years after the original Alien, the 2012 film Prometheus is chronologically the first entry in the Alien timeline . This means that it takes place long before the events of Alien: Romulus . The movie starts in 2089 before going forward to 2093, with the storyline involving the crew of the eponymous spaceship. Following a "star map," the crew ends up finding various artifacts related to the origins of the human race. Unfortunately, these also tie them to the Engineers, a group of humanoid extraterrestrials that seemingly want to end humanity.

The film was envisioned as being set in the same world as the Alien movies, though these connections (besides the insidious Weyland Corporation) weren't initially clear. Things become more obvious as the movie ends, however, with the alien mutant offspring of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (which had been removed from her stomach and since grown immensely) impregnating an Engineer. The offspring of this forced reproduction then sprouts from the Engineer's body as an ancestral version of the Xenomorphs from the main Alien movies.

This prequel series continued with 2017's Alien: Covenant , which took place 11 years after the end of Prometheus . There, it was revealed that the "perfected" Xenomorphs were intentionally designed by none other than David, the human-like android seen in the previous film. Nevertheless, there were still several mysteries left by the movie's conclusion. Most notably, the crashed Engineer ship seen later in the original Alien had yet to be explained. So far, this is the most recently-released Alien film, and it's unknown if there will ever be a direct sequel that bridges the gap with the later films.

Following clues to the origin of mankind, a team finds a structure on a distant moon, but they soon realize they are not alone.

Alien: Romulus Director Picks His Favorite Film From the Franchise

The director of the upcoming seventh entry in the franchise, Fede Álvarez, has revealed his favorite Alien film.

The first Alien movie is set in the year 2122, which is only 18 years after the conclusion of Alien: Covenant and still a bit before Alien: Romulus . The plot involves the crew of the Nostromo, namely series protagonist Ellen Ripley, being forced to contend with a Xenomorph when one infects one of their own and kills them one by one . It's also revealed that Weyland-Yutani (having had a merger since the days of Prometheus ) are interested in obtaining a Xenomorph specimen for its own nefarious purposes. Likewise, in between the events of this film and the last film, a group of Engineers landed on the planet LV-426 and deposited several Xenomorph eggs there.

The story continues in Aliens , which takes place in 2179 . The time jump and Ripley's being the same age is due to her having been in cryogenic sleep in the interim, with LV-426 becoming a colony during the time skip. Unfortunately, a legion of Xenomorphs is awakened, forcing Ripley and a crew of soldiers to go in and take them on. Both Aliens and its sequel, Alien 3 , took place in 2179 . The latter film ended with Ripley, now the host for the infant Xenomorph queen, sacrificing herself to be rid of the species once and for all. The fourth film was Alien: Resurrection , which takes place 202 years later, in 2381 , and follows a clone of Ellen Ripley.

Using blood samples from the true Ripley, scientists were able to create replicas of both her and the Xenomorphs. This causes the new Xenomorph queen, who has mutated genetics, to give birth to a more human-looking hybrid. Together with the crew of the Auriga, the cloned Ripley has to contend with her offspring as the characters eventually find themselves heading to Earth. So far, this is the latest that the long Alien series has gone in terms of chronology, and that's yet to change even with the new movie Alien: Romulus .

Alien Romulus Cast Shares Intense Facehugger & Chestburster Encounters!

Alien Romulus Cast Shares Intense Facehugger & Chestburster Encounters!

The seventh main entry in the overall Alien timeline, Alien: Romulus releases seven years after the prequel, Alien: Covenant . It's not a follow-up to the Prometheus duology, however, and it's instead more standalone in nature. The movie is set in between the events of Alien and Aliens , which is, to be fair, a span of several decades. The exact year has now been revealed as being 20 years after the first movie, meaning that it's also set 37 years before Aliens . The story will involve a group of space colonists who come face-to-face with a deadly Xenomorph while investigating a lost spaceship. Adding to the more "old-school" feel is the use of practical effects over CGI , making the Xenomorph scarier than ever.

Given that the movie is meant to be narratively independent, it's unlikely that the ship in Alien: Romulus will be directly tied to any seen in the first Alien movie or even Prometheus and Alien: Covenant . Since the movie isn't out yet, it remains to be seen if plot points from Romulus will be built upon in future movies. At the same time, the title of Alien: Romulus will have a mythological connection , somewhat similar to Prometheus . How this will truly manifest likely depends on how well the film performs, especially since Alien: Covenant was something of a box office disappointment. If the new film is successful, it will possibly receive direct sequels that tie things more firmly to the events of Aliens . Regardless of this performance, there will also be an additional prequel comic for Alien: Romulus released later in 2024.

Did Jean-Claude Van Damme Quit the Role of the Original Predator?

In the latest Movie Legends Revealed, we try to get into the bottom of Jean-Claude Van Damme's disastrous stint as the original Predator actor

The two Alien vs. Predator movies are not canon to the events of the mainline Alien films , and they're meant more as fun romps that pit the two extraterrestrial species against each other. The events of the films directly contradict established Alien lore, especially given what was revealed in Prometheus . For instance, the first Alien vs. Predator movie is shown as taking place in the same year as it came out: 2004. This doesn't match up with Prometheus , which showed that the Xenomorph species didn't even exist in a primordial form until 2089.

Likewise, it had no ties to the Predator films, which conversely are in a different canon than Alien . Thus, the crossover movie and its sequel have no bearing on the other films, including the upcoming Alien: Romulus . Both of the Alien vs. Predator movies received largely negative reviews, and they were seen as disappointing combinations of the two iconic franchises. Part of the issue was the lack of true horror, namely in the first movie. Compared to Alien , the Predator franchise as a whole is more mixed in terms of reception, with the original film, Predators and the more recent prequel Prey being outliers compared to the negative reaction to Predator 2 and The Predator . Regardless, these films are merely optional and don't have to be watched in order to enjoy the story of the new film Alien: Romulus .

Alien: Romulus

Alien: Romulus follows a group of space explorers who discover an uncharted planet with a dark secret. As they investigate, they are hunted by deadly xenomorphs and uncover ancient ruins revealing the planet's terrifying history. The crew must use their skills and technology to survive the relentless attacks and find a way to escape the hostile environment.

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The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Review: The Series Deserves a Better Send-Off

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Let's time jump, shall we the umbrella academy 6 years later, new villains, new apocalypse: nick offerman and megan mullally are superb, the umbrella sags but elliot page and the show's action still impress.

Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy has finally arrived, marking an end to the inventive series and the intriguing spin creator/showrunner Steve Blackman gave to the popular comic books created and written by Gerard Way. It’s been a long road for the Hargreeves siblings, who have fought off the apocalypse more than once, a doomsday, in fact, that somehow they all played a part in. (Who would have thought?) Righting a horrible wrong is never easy, and that was part of the fun diving into Blackman’s timeline-jumping creation about a gaggle of mismatched souls with fabulous superpowers.

When the series dropped in 2019, it felt fresh and inventive, and the narrative lured you in and kept you interested. Season 4, short and sweet as it is with six episodes, feels out of place . More like a penultimate season of sorts. There are far too many new elements and characters to fully digest properly. The narrative and our favorite characters get lost in the mix. Like disparate timelines, suddenly an overused theme in so many sci-fi movies and series, the season drifts this way and that, and becomes somewhat of a headscratcher .

We’ll stay and see things through across these final episodes, of course, because we’ve come to love and appreciate the characters, their story arcs, and the journeys they’ve been on. But one cannot escape the feeling of “get on with it / get to the point” emanating from this creative beast which is literally on its last breath. But alas, can it be all that bad with Nick Offerman ( Parks and Recreation ) and Megan Mullally ( Will & Grace ) as the best scene stealers to hit the screen recently? Bless their hearts. But let’s unpack this bloated spectacle, which, while still enjoyable, ultimately deserved a better sendoff.

The Umbrella Academy - Season 4

On one day in 1989, 43 infants are inexplicably born to random, unconnected women who showed no signs of pregnancy the day before. Seven are adopted by billionaire industrialist Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who creates the Umbrella Academy and prepares his "children" to save the world. In their teenage years, though, the family fractures and the team disbands. Fast forward to the present time, when the six surviving members of the clan reunite upon the news of Hargreeves' passing. They work together to solve a mystery surrounding their father's death, but divergent personalities and abilities again pull the estranged family apart, and a global apocalypse is another imminent threat. The series is based on a collection of comics and graphic novels created and written by My Chemical Romance lead singer Gerard Way.

• It's great to see these characters again, and Elliot Page is better than ever, but Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally steal the show.
• The action sequences and soundtrack are superb as ever, and the dialogue packs a punch.
• Too many characters and plots are introduced for the final season.
• The Umbrella Academy simply doesn't end some of the show's storylines in fulfilling ways.

Remember the third season finale? You’ll be forgiven if you don’t, and the quick rewind before Episode 1 begins gives you enough of a refresher. There was a lot of fuss about Daddy Hargreeves’ (Colm Feore) obsession with entering the “Oblivion” and unlocking its secrets. The Hotel Oblivion showdown ultimately found Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) rather keen on the idea of turning a magic key to reset the universe. Our gang appeared in another timeline intact, but without their powers. What to do?

In Season 4, we jump to six years later . Viktor (Elliot Page) is working in a diner in Nova Scotia. Number Five (Aidan Gallagher) is undercover for, well, watch and see! Diego and Lila (David Castañeda and Ritu Arya) are feeling challenged (read: bored) with conventional married/parental life. Luther (Tom Hopper) has become an exotic male dancer (nice pump, dude!) while Allison is an “actress” and lives with her daughter (Millie Davis).

Klaus (Robert Sheehan) gave up drugs only to become an obsessive compulsive germaphobe. Ben (Justin H. Min), always beleaguered, is constantly miffed. You’ll have to wait until Episode 2 to experience more superpower-related zing, and it’s thanks to Ben’s story arc that we get there. How the gang get their powers back is best to be experienced on your own.

The Umbrella Academy: 10 Other Great Shows and Movies Featuring the Cast

Now in its fourth season, The Umbrella Academy has a lot of fans and a celebrated cast.

If you recall, The Commission, which oversaw that fickle space-time continuum, went bust by Season 3, and while the Hargreeves siblings have been getting on with their lives here, another dangerous, cultish group has emerged. They’ve dubbed themselves The Keepers, a wackadoo group of conspiracy theorists helmed by husband-and-wife duo Gene and Jean Thibodeau. It’s a delight to see real-life couple Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally in these roles . Mullally tends to steal the spotlight away from her husband with her take on Jean. But don’t be fooled by her sweet ol’ accent and calming presence. Jean and Gene — fun gag! — and their minions believe they’re in the wrong timeline, and they’ll stop at nothing to get back to their main one.

Related: Umbrella Academy Season 3 Ending, Explained

That’s a fine premise to work off of, and when the Hargreeves and those affiliated with them share scenes with the Thibodeaus, there’s some great fun to be had. But creatively, things get sidetracked early on . Blackman insists on splintering off the team. By Episode 3, there are far too many subplots to track. Though we do learn more about the Thibodeaus, which offers some of the best scenes of the season. Offerman and Mullally know how to work off of each other’s comedic strength. One hilarious bit finds the couple dancing to Cher’s "Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves ." Brilliant.

Meanwhile, the Hargreeves are intent on uncovering what The Keepers are really up to. That said, Number Five and Lila find themselves in a precarious timeline-related drama, which boasts several predictable elements, yet ultimately satisfies. Diego and Luther connect with a CIA. Klaus always has funny storylines . This particular one will either force an eyeroll or make you slap your thighs in laughter. Viktor and Daddy Hargreeves (in this iteration — after all, another timeline, another daddy) embark on their own journey. It’s a lot to pack in in just six episodes.

The Umbrella Academy Cast Get Personal About the Series' Ending

Elliot Page and other stars of Netflix's hit series say their goodbyes as the final season approaches.

Look for Ben and newbie Jennifer’s (Victoria Sawal) connection to be the main thrust taking the series to its finale. David Cross also appears, fueling the intrigue. In the meantime, all that family bickering is back. But so are the superpowers. The scenes that feature them never disappoint. Something must be said, too, about Viktor here. There are several times when the character, so wonderfully embodied by Elliot Page, delivers heated monologues that just sizzle with intensity. They are raw, visceral, and packed with emotion , recalling the origins of the series — remember when this character didn’t have access to powers?

Related: The Umbrella Academy Season 3: How Allison Goes From Hero to Villain

Other notables: The final season does offer some closure on other creative threads left dangling — the true cause of Ben’s death, for instance — but there are far too many things that never get wrapped up. The action sequences tend to be extremely fun, as always. The slo-mo is in full effect, and the soundtrack is stellar, featuring Johnny Rivers, Guantanamo Baywatch, Fats Domino, Muse, and Talking Heads, among others.

The best things about the season are the quirky scenarios the characters once again find themselves in — and The Keepers arc, with Offerman and Mullally in fine form. Some end scenes may leave fans divided . Still, most viewers will appreciate this last, wild and zany ride. The umbrella isn’t quite broken. It just sags a bit. Season 4 of The Umbrella Academy is streaming on Netflix and you can watch it through the link below:

Watch The Umbrella Academy

More From Forbes

‘borderlands’: the most scathing reviews of video game film adaptation.

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Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, , Florian Munteanu and Cate Blanchett in ... [+] "Borderlands."

Critics are ripping the video game movie adaptation of Borderlands, starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black.

Directed by Eli Roth, Borderlands is an adaption of the Borderlands video game series that began in 2009. The movie stars Blanchett as Lilith, a mysterious bounty hunter who reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora after a powerful space baron, Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), plays her a huge sum to locate his missing daughter.

Upon her return to Pandora, Lilith switches gears and seeks a legendary vault full of treasure with a group of new allies, including a mercenary, Roland (Hart), a pre-teen demolitionist named Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) and her bodyguard Krieg (Florian Munteanu).

Lilith is also joined on her mission by a wisecracking robot named Claptrap (voice of Black) and an old ally, Tannis (Curtis), who is a scientist and archaeologist.

The film played in previews Thursday night and it didn’t take long for critics to bombard Borderlands with bad reviews.

As of Thursday, Rotten Tomatoes critics collectively gave the big-budget movie a 6% “rotten” rating based on 48 reviews.

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The RT Critics Consensus reads, “Glitching out in every department, Borderlands is balderdash.” Viewers on RT, however, gave the movie a 52% “rotten” rating based on 50-plus verified user ratings.

What Did Individual Critics Say About ‘Borderlands’?

Several top Rotten Tomatoes critics weighed on Borderlands and compliments for the film were almost non-existent.

In his summary of the movie, Toronto Star critic Peter Howell writes, “There are still many cinema turkeys headed our way before the year closes. But this sci-fi gobbler mixes inept directing, terrible writing, indifferent acting and gawdawful CGI into such stupefying boredom, it feels like nothing could top it for badness.”

Basically saying the film is for nobody, Rolling Stone critic David Fear writes, “It’s not a movie for critics, as the saying goes. Nor is it suitable for consumption by most gamers, film lovers, or 99 percent of carbon-based life forms.”

In his knock on the film, The Daily Beast critic Nick Schager brought the controversial showbiz subject of artificial intelligence into his review of Borderlands , writing, “So drearily routine and slapdash that even an A.I. would deem it too plagiaristic.”

In a warning to potential game player audience members, Barry Hertz of the U.K.’s Globe and Mail writes, “Tonally messy, narratively janky and slathered with pasted-over narration that reeks of creative indecision, the film is an embarrassing affair for even the most hardcore of gamers.”

Meanwhile, the London Evening Standard’s critic, Vicky Jessop, takes no prisoners in her review, writing, “Is Borderlands the worst film of the year? It’s definitely in contention—so laughably bad, in fact, that it feels like being catapulted back to a time when video game adaptations were a byword for mediocrity.”

Adding insult to injury, Deadline projects that Borderlands —which is being released by Lionsgate—will only make $15 million in its opening weekend. The film, Deadline added, had a production budget of $120 million to $130 million with an additional $30 million spent on prints and advertising costs.

Rated PG-13, Borderlands opens Friday in theaters nationwide.

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‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ Review: They Should Have Gone Back to the Drawing Board

Crockett Johnson's beloved 1955 storybook becomes one more adaptation of a children's classic that swaps in formula for magic.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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The title character, played by the grown-up prankster Zachary Levi (huh? More on that in a moment), starts off as a cartoon figure living in a drawn world, kind of like the world of the books. But then, having been abandoned by his “old man” creator, he lands in the real world, and “Harold and the Purple Crayon” instantly converts to that quintessential formula: the fish-out-of-water comedy. It’s also one of those movies in which a live-action universe becomes the backdrop for an animated character like Garfield or Sonic. Except that the “character,” in this case, is simply the drawings that Harold does. Over the course of the movie, he draws a spare tire, a two-seater bike, pies and ice cream, skateboards and roller skates, a gleaming propeller plane, a giant lock and wrecking ball (to escape a prison), a griffin, and a spider-fly with vicious teeth.

Even young viewers of “Harold and the Purple Crayon” may feel they’ve seen versions of most of these effects before. For what made the book special wasn’t just that Harold could draw anything. It was the wide-eyed feeling with which he did it.

“Harold” the movie replaces wide eyes with audience-tested conceits, starting with the fact that someone thought Zachary Levi’s performance as a kid-inside-an-adult-superhero’s-body in the first “Shazam!” would somehow make him perfect to play Harold. But where Levi’s performance in “Shazam!” was sly and understated, here, walking around in what looks like the world’s weirdest Hawaiian shirt, he’s all gawky, eager, italicized-kid overacting. Harold has two animal sidekicks, both of whom appear in human form: Moose, played with antic glee by Lil Rel Howery , and Porcupine, who appears as a purple-mohawked punk played by the fiery Tanya Reynolds, who someone should waste no time casting in a Sinéad O’Connor biopic.

The director, Carlos Saldanha, a veteran of animation (“Rio,” the “Ice Age” films), stages the dramatic arcs in David Guion and Michael Handelman’s screenplay as if they were made of pasteboard. Harold and company befriend young Mel (Benjamin Bottani) and his widowed mother, Terry ( Zooey Deschanel , in one of those hardheaded-mom-who’s-the-only-sane-person-in-the-room roles). The kid has replaced his missing father with imaginary friends, and it’s the kick of Harold’s drawings that’s supposed to bring joy back to his life.

Reviewed at Sony Screening Room, New York, July 30, 2024. MPA Rating: PG. Running time: 92 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Releasing release of a Columbia Pictures, Davis Entertainment production. Producer: John Davis. Executive producers: Jeremy Stein. Jenny Hinkey.
• Crew: Director: Carlos Saldanha. Screenplay: David Guion, Michael Handelman. Camera: Gabriel Beristain. Editors: Mark Helfrich, Tia Nolan. Music: Batu Sener.
• With: Zachary Levi, Lil Rel Howery, Benjamin Bottani, Zooey Deschanel, Jemaine Clement, Tanya Reynolds, Alfred Molina.

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