Meg Ryan's return to romantic comedy sees her paired up with Hugh Jackman in a very funny time travelling movie.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8413 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-02-03
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, Italian
• Subtitled in: English, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 113 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
On its theatrical release, James Mangold's romantic comedy Kate & Leopold was rightly panned for holes in the logic of its time-travel plot. Stewart (Liev Schreiber) finds a portal to 1876 and goes to observe his ancestor Leopold, Duke of Albany (Hugh Jackman) who then follows him back to 2001. Since Leopold is responsible for inventing a key component in lifts, this instantly causes problems.

The gallant Leopold charms, and is charmed by Stewart's ex, Kate (Meg Ryan), a hard-boiled cynical marketing expert who finds in Victorian idealism a corrective to her view of the world. And this is part of the problem with the film--we cannot entirely believe in Meg Ryan as a cynic, or that her problems can be resolved by going off to 1876 to be with her aristocratic sweetie, and much of the film has an oddly sour hostility to its heroine. Hugh Jackman is a delight in the fish-out-of-water scenes and Breckin Meyer is also very funny as Kate's actor brother, who assumes Leopold is a colleague sunk deep into the creation of a part.

On the DVD Kate and Leopold has crisp Dolby 5:1 sound, which allows the very different acoustics of the two historical periods to be neatly contrasted, and is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen. We get both the theatrical and Director's cut, both offered with commentary, though the Director's cut audio track is more polemical. The Director's cut restores some expository material and makes more sense. --Roz Kaveney

From the studio
• Deleted Scenes

• Deleted Scenes Commentary

• 'On The Set' Featurette

• Interactive Director’s Cut

• Feature Commentary

• Sting "Until" Music Video

• Costume Featurette

• Still Gallery

Synopsis
In this romance novel come to life, Meg Ryan plays the titular Kate, a career-driven market researcher who's been burned by love. Her science-obsessed ex-boyfriend (Liev Schreiber), who lives in the apartment upstairs from hers, says he's found a portal to travel through time and has brought a nineteenth-century nobleman, Leopold (Hugh Jackman), back with him. Kate's not buying it, and she angrily calls him crazy. But when her irritating ex is laid up in the hospital, she reluctantly assumes responsibility for the seemingly helpless stranger, Leopold. At first baffled by his forthrightness and old-fashioned chivalry--complete with white horse!--Kate soon finds herself falling in love with Leopold despite her best efforts. But if he doesn't return to his own century, the fabric of time could be disastrously altered.
BACK TO THE FUTURE plus WHEN HARRY MET SALLY equals KATE AND LEOPOLD, a charming, idealistic romance that will make you believe in true love. In addition to engaging performances by Ryan, Jackman, and Schreiber, James Mangold, the film's director, appears in a tongue-in-cheek cameo as an irate film director, and Spalding Gray stars as Schreiber's psychiatrist.

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Customer Reviews

...AND THE WINNER IS...HUGH JACKMAN!
Hands down, this romantic comedy is a Hugh Jackman vehicle, as he totally steals the show from Meg Ryan. Jackman plays the role of the Duke of Albany, Leopold Mountbatten, an English nobleman visiting his uncle in New York in 1876. At his uncle's behest, Leopold is to find a rich socialite to marry, so that he may replenish the family's depleted coffers.

While at a ball in his uncle's New York house, awash with rich and eager heiresses, he notices a stranger who had earlier caught his attention. He follows the stranger and finds himself in the year 2001, as he falls through a portal in time. Landing in the apartment of Stuart Besser (Liev Schreiber), the stranger whom he had followed, he soon meets Kate McKay (Meg Ryan), Stuart's former girlfriend of four years and a modern day Everywoman. Let the games begin.

What follows is nothing earth shattering. In fact, it is pretty predictable. Leopold and Kate fall in love, though the big question is why, as there is nothing to suggest why they should. Meg Ryan does her usual Meg Ryan thing, though she is starting to get a bit little long in the tooth to be playing the brash, cutesy ingenue. She is, in fact, getting to be quite tiresome in these sorts of roles, as she plays them all exactly the same, making them virtually indistinguishable one from the other. She needs to extend her range, before her adoring public stops adoring her.

Jackman, however, does a star turn with his gently effective and ingratiating portrayal of Leopold. He is simply sensational. Charming, handsome, and warm, with a light British accent that rings true, he is totally believable as a chivalrous gent from another time. Jackman totally upstages Ryan without meaning to do so. It is a good thing that he does. Were he not to have done so, the film would most likely have totally tanked. Clearly, Hugh Jackman is big time, leading man material.

Liev Schreiber is unappealing as the film's erstwhile time traveler and Kate's ex-lover, Stuart Besser, who, it turns out, is the great, great grandson of the Duke. Moreover, it is not believable that Stuart and Kate would ever have dated, much less have been lovers for four years, as there is no chemistry between them. Still, it is more believable than the relationship that blossoms between Leopold and Kate. The happy ending also makes Stuart's and Kate's former relationship somewhat distasteful, if not downright incestuous, in retrospect.

The rest of the supporting cast is fine with an excellent performance by Breckin Meyer in the role of Charlie McKay, Kate's somewhat goofy, but lovable, cute, younger brother. Bradley Whitford of West Wing fame also gives a winning performance as J.J. Camden, Kate's smarmy boss, who ultimately has second thoughts about what constitutes professional behavior and lets the cream rise to the top, so to speak.

All in all, this is a moderately entertaining film, all but forgettable, but for the memorable performance of Hugh Jackman.

Under the glossy surface, it's adult entertainment
Having seen this film unwillingly in the cinema, I was so charmed by it that I bought the DVD and enjoyed it even more watching it with a running commentary from the director. Viewed separately, the "bath" and "speech" scenes that were cut had me rolling on the floor.

It's an easy film to feel superior to if you're not tuned to its wry self-satire. An interesting essay could be written about its use of food as a metaphor for the two contrasting civilizations. Does is romanticize the past? Of course! Is the plot full of holes? Certainly -- but then, so is a Swiss cheese.

Slightly above average romantic comedy.
Like most romantic comedies this will not shake you to your foundations with the originality of its basic premise. It's boy (from the late nineteenth century) meets girl (from the turn of the twenty-first). But it's nicely done and it looks more convincing than something so obviously daft (he falls through a rip in time and just happens to end up in the flat above the woman of his dreams).

I have to admit that Hugh Jackman is more of a reason to watch it than Meg Ryan (and that's not just from the looks point of view). Her character is cold and has a fairly unattractive personality, whereas his character is warm and charming. In fact you could wish that he ended up with someone more pleasant, really. Hence the three stars rather than perhaps four, romantic films should let us see why each of the characters falls for the other, and while Leopold is irresistible, Kate is definitely not.