movie review somewhere in time

Somewhere in Time

“Somewhere in Time” wants us to share its sweeping romantic idealism, about a love so great that it spanned the decades and violated the sanctity of time itself. But we keep getting distracted by nagging doubts, like, isn’t it a little futile to travel 68 years backward into time for a one-night stand? The movie surrounds its love story with such boring mumbo jumbo about time travel that we finally just don’t care.

It didn’t have to be that way. Last year’s underrated and neglected movie “Time after Time,” which had H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper traveling forward into modern San Francisco, contained a love story that had a lot of sly fun with the notion of relationships between people of different eras. “Somewhere in Time” has a lot of qualities, but slyness and fun are not two of them.

This movie drips with solemnity. It enshrines its lovers in such excessive romantic nobility that Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody plays almost every time they’re on the screen. This is the kind of romance so sacred, so serious, so awesome, that you have to lower your voice in the presence of it. Romances like those are boring even to the monstrous egos usually involved in them.

But back to the movie. “Somewhere in Time” stars Christopher Reeve as a Chicago playwright who visits the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and sees a photograph there of an actress who appeared at the hotel in 1912. He is smitten; no, he is obsessed. He researches the career of the actress, falls in love with her, learns from a pseudoscientific psychology professor that time travel is possible, and hypnotizes himself to travel back to 1912.

The movie never makes it clear whether the playwright actually does travel through time, or only hypnotizes himself into thinking he does. It doesn’t matter. Once he’s back in 1912, or thinks he is, he meets the young actress, who is played by the preternaturally beautiful Jane Seymour . “Is it … you?” she breathes. It is! It is! A little of this goes a long way, even with Rachmaninoff. Especially with Rachmaninoff.

There is, of course, a villain. He is the young actress’s manager, played by Christopher Plummer . He has guided her career since she was 16, and now resents the intrusion of this stranger who has come from nowhere, is dressed oddly, and threatens to steal his protégé. There are some intrigues, as the three of them steal about the rooms and grounds of the magnificent Grand Hotel. But there are never any scenes that really deal with the romance between Reeve and Seymour -and, incredibly, the movie avoids the opportunity to exploit in their relationship the fact that Reeve is from the future. All of the delightful revelations and paradoxes that could have resulted from Reeve revealing that fact are simply ignored.

This is, of course, Reeve’s first movie since “ Superman ,” and he is not particularly convincing in it. He seems a little stolid, a little ungainly; he’s so desperately earnest in his love for this actress that he always seems to be squinting a little. The whole movie is so solemn, so worshipful toward its theme, that it’s finally just silly.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Christopher Plummer as W. F. Robinson
• Bill Erwin as Arthur
• Teresa Wright as Laura Roberts
• Bo Clausen as Man in Elevator
• Christopher Reeve as Richard Collier
• Jane Seymour as Elise McKenna

Photographed by

• Isidore Mankofsky

Directed by

• Jeannot Szwarc
• Jeff Gourson

Screenplay by

• Richard Matheson

Produced by

• Stephen Deutsch

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Somewhere in Time Reviews

Somewhere In Time, like its central character, is out of its proper time and place. It's an interesting experiment, and a brave one, but one that was doomed to fail in 1981.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2022

Somewhere in Time is murky and underwritten. The basic premise would be thin even for a Harlequin romance.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 25, 2022

Sloppy where it should be sure, crudely drawn where it should be sensitive, careless around the edges with extraneous bits of business, the film takes the audience's complicity for granted and loses its grasp in the process.

Full Review | Nov 4, 2021

Funny, smart, touching and, did we mention romantic? Somewhere in Time is a masterclass in acting, writing and emotive cinema. Required viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 1, 2019

I understand why this movie has a respectable cult following. I get the appeal. I only wish the movie would have followed through with its promising premise all the way. I didn't dislike it, but was a little letdown.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 15, 2013

A charming, witty, passionate romantic drama about a love transcending space and time, Somewhere In Time is an old-fashioned film in the best sense of that term.

Full Review | Dec 10, 2007

Jeannot Szwarc does well in the director's chair, and Jean-Pierre Dorleac (brother of Francoise) deserves special commendation for his costumes. But Seymour is given too little to do, and Reeve does too much.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 10, 2007

Director Jeannot Szwarc strains hard for spectacular visual effects, though he's barely able to compose a competent close-up.

This must go down as a missed opportunity.

Full Review | Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 21, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2005

The movie surrounds its love story with such boring mumbo jumbo about time travel that we finally just don't care.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 23, 2004

The [Grand H]otel and Mackinac [Island] are spectacularly lovely, but fail to give substance to this ephemeral endeavor.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 30, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 28, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 8, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 13, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 26, 2002

Above all, this film captures a romantic part of the imagination that is often left unexplored.

Full Review | Original Score: 73/100 | Feb 13, 2001

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Metacritic reviews

Somewhere in time.

• 90 Variety Variety A charming, witty, passionate romantic drama about a love transcending space and time, Somewhere In Time is an old-fashioned film in the best sense of that term. Which means it's carefully crafted, civilized in its sensibilities, and interested more in characterization than in shock effects.
• 63 TV Guide Magazine TV Guide Magazine Jeannot Szwarc does well in the director's chair, and Jean-Pierre Dorleac deserves special commendation for his costumes. But Seymour is given too little to do, and Reeve does too much.
• 50 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert The whole movie is so solemn, so worshipful toward its theme, that it's finally just silly.
• 50 Boston Globe Boston Globe Somewhere in Time is a glossy, flossy and intermittently interesting piece of kitsch which, with more sensitive craftsmanship, could have been one of the more dazzling screen romances of the year. It's too bad that it's held down by its more overt commercial impulses. [7 Oct 1980, p.1]
• 30 The New York Times Vincent Canby The New York Times Vincent Canby The screenplay is priceless (funny) and it's Mr. Reeve who sets the film's tone. Unfortunately, his unshadowed good looks, granite profile, bright naivete and eagerness to please - the qualities that made him such an ideal Superman - look absurd here.
• 12 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jay Scott The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jay Scott The manner in which the writer, Richard Matheson, and Jeannot Szwarc, in his glory days the director of Jaws II, conspire to tell the story should not only render the audience tearless, but speechless as well. [11 Oct 1980, p.E7]
• 10 Chicago Reader Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Dave Kehr Director Jeannot Szwarc strains hard for spectacular visual effects, though he's barely able to compose a competent close-up.
• See all 7 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Somewhere in Time

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Somewhere in Time Reviews

• 29   Metascore
• 1 hr 43 mins
• Drama, Fantasy
• Watchlist Where to Watch

A playwright becomes obsessed with an actress in a 1912 portrait. The more he learns about this beauty from the past, the deeper he falls in love. He manages to transport himself back in time to be by the side of this woman he has never met.

Reviewed By: Lisa Kropiewnicki

Somewhere In Time was a labor of love for everyone involved in it, from the producer Stephen Deutsch and director Jeannot Szwarc, who originated the project (under the auspices of Ray Stark's Raystar Productions) to composer John Barry, who took a fraction of his usual fee to score the finished film. Made for barely $4 million, an insignificant budget in Hollywood even in 1980, the movie ran counter to the usual fantasy films of its era, with no reliance on elaborate special effects in telling its tale of time travel. The makers realized that with the resources at hand, the movie could only work if the romance at the center of the plot was credible, and in that regard, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour were ideally cast opposite each other. There are flaws, particularly in some aspects of Reeve's performance, which is too callow at times, but they do carry it off with help from Christopher Plummer, Bill Erwin, Susan French, and Teresa Wright. The result was a 1980 movie that had more in common with such 1940s romantic fantasies as Portrait of Jennie, Stairway to Heaven, and Beyond Tomorrow than with any films of its own era. Understandably, the critics savaged Somewhere in Time for its sentimentality. It died at the box office, and that might have been the last that anyone heard of it. Among those people who had seen the movie and loved it, however, was the programming director of a new Los Angeles movie cable service called Z-Channel, which licensed it from Universal (which was only too happy to see any interest in the movie) in the early 1980s, giving hundreds of thousands of viewers their first chance to see Somewhere in Time. From that beginning, Somewhere in Time developed a major cult following that blossomed when it went to home video and continues to grow in the 21st century; there are large clubs of enthusiasts and fans, who have even organized forums in which the makers and cast members meet to celebrate the film; if not on the level of the Trekkies and Star Trek, the phenomenon is still an impressive viewer response to a movie. Somewhere in Time is very much a film for romantics -- those for whom the central story and the characters don't resonate will likely not enjoy it at all; but for others, it is a ravishing, totally enveloping experience. The John Barry score has also found a life of its own in a new CD recording as of the year 2000 -- his music, some of the best of his career, was aided by the presence in the film of the 18th variation of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Paganini, which had also figured prominently 27 years earlier in MGM's The Story of Three Loves.