Would you give up the right to vote in order to marry Hugh Jackman? That’s essentially the question at the heart of Kate & Leopold, a 2001 time travel rom-com about a sensitive 19th-century duke (Jackman) and the cynical modern day New Yorker (Meg Ryan) who winds up falling for him after he tumbles through a crack in time. And it’s a testament to just how good Hugh Jackman is in this movie that even the most ardent feminist might need a second to consider their options. By the time Ryan’s Kate McKay has made the impulsive choice to follow her out-of-time beau back to 1876, you kind of get it. Who needs airplanes, tampons, and access to penicillin when you can have Jackman take you in his arms and waltz you around a ballroom?
Yet the weirdest thing about Kate & Leopold isn’t anything that happens in its wacky time travel plot, which at one point involves Liev Schreiber falling several stories down an empty elevator shaft. It’s the fact that this gauzy romantic comedy was written and directed by James Mangold, who would later re-team with Jackman to make Logan, one of the bleakest, most critically respected superhero films of all time.
At first glance, there’s very little about Kate & Leopold that seems like a natural fit for Mangold’s filmmaking interests, which usually lean toward grizzled dad movies like 3:10 To Yuma, Walk The Line, and Ford V Ferrari. In fact, Mangold was specifically drawn to the idea of helming an escapist studio rom-com because he wanted a change of pace after bursting onto the scene with heavier dramas like Cop Land and Girl, Interrupted. But once you look past the waistcoats and candlelit rooftop dinners, you can actually start to see Mangold’s touch all over this frothy romance.
For one thing, Kate & Leopold is absolutely obsessed with men and their relationships to one another, a go-to subject matter for Mangold. The ensemble is rounded out with major roles for Kate’s scatterbrained ex-boyfriend Stuart (Schreiber), who figures out how to time travel and inadvertently brings Leopold back to the present; her skeevy boss J.J. (Bradley Whitford), who dangles a promotion and a potential romantic relationship as if they’re one and the same; and her boyish brother Charlie (Breckin Meyer), a struggling actor with a floundering love life. Weirdly enough, Mangold’s take on The Wolverine has more well-rounded female characters than this romantic comedy where the female lead has top billing in the title. There are whole stretches of the movie that leave Kate behind entirely to focus on Leopold and Charlie’s burgeoning friendship, as the old-fashioned duke teaches his modern-day counterpart some lessons in how to successfully court a woman.
While other time travel rom-coms have used their central conceits as metaphors for everything from marriage to maturation, Mangold is interested in shifting ideals of masculinity. The initial fish-out-of-water comedy of Leopold’s arrival in modern-day New York gives way to a study in contrasts between the immature, emotionally stunted men of the present and the noble confidence of a man from the past—whose chivalry isn’t a means to an end, but a genuine code for trying to be a better, more caring person. Kate & Leopold isn’t interested in manhood as it relates to machismo swagger or bro-y gross-out humor, but as it relates to ideals of integrity, honesty, respect, and, most unexpectedly of all, emotional openness. Leopold’s biggest piece of advice to Charlie is that he shouldn’t awkwardly half-flirt with his crush while trying to suss out her interests. “Make your intentions known,” Leopold advises. “Think of pleasing her, not vexing her.”
Of course, it’s wildly ahistorical to think that the person best-suited to teach us how to live sensitive, respectful 21st-century lives is an aristocratic man from the 1800s—even if Leopold is supposed to be a forward-thinking inventor who goes on to patent the elevator. In a lot of ways, it probably would’ve made more sense for Kate & Leopold to be a Thor-style comedy where the displaced outsider learns his lesson, rather than an Enchanted-style story where they change the world around them for the better.
But as Mangold repeatedly points out in the film’s DVD commentary, Kate & Leopold isn’t actually about contrasting the 1870s with the 2000s so much as paying homage to an Old Hollywood style of romantic filmmaking. Beyond its overt nods to Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Kate & Leopold has a dreamily timeless quality that evokes movies like The Apartment and The Shop Around The Corner.
Mangold encouraged Jackman to play Leopold less as a realistic historical figure and more as a cross between Errol Flynn and Cary Grant. The genius of casting Jackman is that he’s an actor who can be both utterly masculine and gracefully feminine all at the same time. Jackman perfectly embodies the contradictions of Leopold, who has the arrogance of Mr. Darcy mixed with the unending politeness of Clark Kent. He commits to the role just as intensely as he’d committed to his debut as Wolverine the year before.
The film’s laugh-out-loud comedy comes from the fact that Jackman plays Leopold’s befuddlement with modern society completely straight—from his shock at the idea of picking up dog poop to his impassioned rant about the “General of Electric” and his disregard for building an effective toaster. Jackman delivers the comedy with the same intensity as his proclamations of love, leaving Leopold as a man whose unfailing principles are both his biggest strength and his most frustrating flaw. It’s a fantastic performance on every level.
Saddled with a less well-written character, Ryan struggles to hold the screen in the same way. The movie vaguely introduces the idea that Kate is a woman in a man’s world. “You skew male,” J.J. tells her at one point. “You’re like a man. A man who understands women, their desires, their needs. You understand them, but you’re not really one of them.” But it doesn’t really drive home that thread with any specificity beyond the standard “overworked rom-com heroine” archetype—an archetype that isn’t really Ryan’s strong suit anyway.
She’s not bad, exactly, and in fact some of her reaction shots are genuinely lovely. This just isn’t among Ryan’s best work in the rom-com genre, and Kate never fully clicks as a character. Kate & Leopold is too distracted by its men to spend enough time on Kate and the question of what she might lose or gain by following Leopold back into the past. So what stands out most is how inexplicably pointy her hair is.
In contrast, Schreiber, Meyer, and Whitford shine because they’re playing characters who are specific in their quirks and eccentricities. At one point Mangold pauses the plot just to give Stuart an extended monologue about the pain of being called crazy for his open scientific mind. And while it’s a strange diversion for a movie with such nonsensical time travel logic, Schreiber sells the hell out of it. Elsewhere, Jackman and Meyer are so sweet together that there are moments where it feels like the movie should’ve just been a love story between Leopold and Charlie. And in terms of Whitford’s best smarmy performances, I’d rank Kate & Leopold right up there with Billy Madison and Get Out. “The Duke Of Margarine thinks me a serpent,” he scoffs at one point after Leopold has been hired as the spokesperson for a diet butter spread.
I’m both proud and embarrassed to say that I watched this movie so many times during my middle-school years that I can still recite Leopold’s “fresh creamery butter” commercial by heart. And while I’m sure I’m not alone in imprinting on this movie at just the right age for it to become an obsession, for the most part Kate & Leopold is a romantic comedy that’s been a little bit lost to time—fitting considering its subject matter. These days it’s probably best remembered as the film that helped secure Jackman’s rise to leading man status in the years between X-Men and X2. He was nominated for a Golden Globe and consistently singled out as a highlight across Kate & Leopold’s mixed reviews. And beyond kicking off his partnership with Mangold, it also seems to have unlocked Jackman’s love of playing forward-thinking Gilded Age men. You could consider Kate & Leopold the first part of an unofficial trilogy with The Prestige and The Greatest Showman.
For all its flaws and forgettability, Kate & Leopold works better than it has any right to, mostly thanks to its talented cast and Mangold’s subtly graceful filmmaking, which is filled with long takes and elegant camera moves. There’s something undeniably cozy about this film, even if it never quite lives up to its potential—either in its theatrical edition or its slightly longer director’s cut, which introduces the idea that Leopold is Stuart’s great‑great‑grandfather and gives Kate a few more notes of cynicism.
In either version, Kate & Leopold works best when it leans into the idea that its whole story is a fairy tale. In his commentary, Mangold talks about the movie being sweet and open-hearted in a way that was swiftly falling out of fashion in the early aughts. And his greatest insight of all is that if you need someone to sell your old-fashioned fairy-tale romance, there’s no better Prince Charming than Hugh Jackman.
Next time: Charade is a perfect rom-com thriller for the Halloween season.
76 Comments
Well, I guess this explains Sabretooth’s centuries of resentment towards Wolverine.
Yeah pretty much. It’s a shame the montage scene from XMO: Wolverine missed this period in their decades long feud. It would have given them some much needed levity
Freshman year high school, some of the drawing classes to a field trip to an art place and this was, for some reason, the movie chosen to watch on the bus ride.
The breakfast scene, lol. Maybe Leopold brought that butter with him.
Leopold always bring the butter…
great write-up as usual, one of the only columns i look forward to anymore. someday it would be great to see this as a collection in print!
so say we all
Hugh Jackman: the perfect man. Discuss.
Handsome, knows how to sing and dance, can probably burst out with the occasional show tune…you may be right.
…and can beat some ass if needed. Hopefully not a skill he needs every day, but good to have in the back pocket.
reading this made me realise that the superhero that Hugh should have played is Superman. It’s obvious he could do the sincere hero bit, but more importantly, he’d be a great Clark Kent. And now he’s the right age for Alex Ross’ Superman in Peace on Earth. Make it happen DC – just keep that Snyder bro the hell away from it.
But Superman is always so clean-cut, while Jackman looks a lot better scruffy.
true but he cleans up good too.
Hugh in this movie, Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans and Matt Bomer in general are my 3 “Not gay, but if I were…”
About 20 years ago, a friend scored us tickets to the pre-Opening gala of the Chicago Auto Show: free food and drink while mingling with well-dressed snobs among shiny concept cars. I’m not even a “car” guy, but it was tons of fun and I was very excited. I put on my best (read: only) suit and waited for him to pick me up. As I waited, my girlfriend turned on PBS just in time to catch the beginning of Great Performances’ “Oklahoma.” Jackman moseyed on stage and abso-fucking-lutely killed “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” and “Surrey With A Fringe On Top.” It was so good that I made my friend wait until “Surrey” was over before I would leave the apartment. Part of me debated just staying home to watch the whole thing.
I think he was perfect before he went overboard with the muscles.
Are you suggesting, madam, that there exists a law compelling a gentleman to lay hold of canine bowel movements?
Where’s Nudeador when we need him?
It’s probably because I haven’t had any caffeine yet, but I thought that was Kate Hudson in the top picture.
I can’t remember if I watched all of Kate & Leopold or turned it off after 20 minutes. Clearly, it made little impression on me.
let me get you some coffee.
This is just vodka and cocaine!
Just?
I watched the whole thing, but I wish I had turned it off after 20 minutes.
This was Jackman’s Bond audition and he walked away from it. That should have been him.
Anyway, I have often pondered Kate after the movie. At what point do you think she is like, “Oh, I’ve made a huge mistake.” Was it:
* Vomiting and diarrhea for three weeks straight because she is now eating pre-FDA meals
* Learning what bathroom and feminine hygeine products are in the 1880s
* Finding out that birth control is her telling Leopold to go sleep in another room
* No penicillin
* Finding out that under the laws and cultural morays of the time, Leopold essentially controls her. And she can’t vote on any of it.
* Realizing she will never find out how Harry Potter turned out
* The slow realization that Stuart, who she had a long-term sexual relationship with, is her great-great-great grandson
This is ripe for a College Humor type treatment.
Maybe she could start a humorous periodical about a woman who struggles with her weight to fit into 19th century garb, is worried that all the other ladies of the household are having babies and uh, she says “AAACK!” a lot.
Probably right before she died in childbirth.
Finding out that under the laws and cultural morays of the time, Leopold essentially controls her.
Oh my god thank you for this thing I never knew I needed in my life!
When the jaws open wide and there’s more jaws inside, that’s a moray! (or possibly a xenomorph, but that doesn’t scan).
Jackman is so much like Gene Kelly. We do not have leading men like that anymore. I also thought of the loss of modern medicine and antibiotics when she chose to go back in time.
I’m trying to think of other stories in which a person willingly goes/stays in the past for love. Time After Time and Back to the Future III (sort of) come to mind, both funnily enough involving Mary Steenburgen. Probably some Doctor Who episodes. Oh, and Outlander of course. There can be a sort of romanticism about living in an earlier era of time, because you like the music/culture/events. But if you magically ever had the chance, I think there would be a very rude awakening to the technological, medical, and societal advancements that were made (frequently agonizingly slowly, granted) that are denied to you now. I’m not sure what was lost would balance out with what’s been gained. (Depending on how far back it is, the loss of air conditioning, sanitation/medical standards, and tolerance would be too much for me. And I like the sound of an electric guitar.)I think Kate, a very modern woman, would really come to regret her decision eventually.
I think the 1920s is pretty much the earliest time any modern person could enjoy living in. Not that there wouldn’t be social issues especially for women and minorities, but in the 1920s you had (in Western nations and in urban environments) electricity, indoor plumbing, recorded music, movies (if silent & B&W), and broadcast pop culture in the form of radio (which besides music had a lot of drama and comedy shows). Plus medicine was beginning to become reasonably scientific.
Although committing to living through a Depression and a second World Kerfuffle is a big ask.
If you knew the 1929 crash was coming there would be ways to protect yourself financially to some degree — it was so devastating because people didn’t expect it to happen. As for WWII, its effects depended greatly on your age and where you lived. If you lived in Mainland Europe, Japan, the Philippines, China, or Korea, and to some extent Britain (via the Blitz), the war came to you. If you lived in places like the US, Canada or Australia you had to go to the war. And that meant basically being in your 20s or 30s in the 1940s. If you were older than that they didn’t really want you unless you were already in service and were an officer. Otherwise you might have to deal with some rationing of food and gasoline but other than that the war wouldn’t really touch you.
I’m not even sure that I’d want to go back to the 1970s, notwithstanding my (somewhat paradoxical) nostalgia for that era. 8-bit video games may be somewhat charming, but I think that I’d quickly miss the variety and sophistication of modern games. Not to mention computers that worked slowly and only did a few things, without being connected to a global network… having to watch TV programs and movies on someone else’s schedule… not being able to listen to literally any song that I pleased at any moment… I mean, I could become rich by investing in the companies that would one day produce those things, but still.
I’m blind as a bat without my contacts/glasses, so I definitely wouldn’t want to travel to a time before the invention of lens grinding. I also have a couple of crowns, so I can’t imagine life would be pleasant if one of those happened to fall off. I knew a woman in college who semi-seriously wanted to travel back to “pirate times” to be a pirate and my response was “umm, hope you like hardtack, scurvy, and dying of a staph infection” I’ve also noticed these time traveling romantics tend to assume they’ll be at the top of the social heap and live in a castle or something rather than being forced to live as, say, a serf who performs back-breaking labor and eats nothing but rutabaga for the rest of their significantly shortened lifespan.
I’ve also noticed these time traveling romantics tend to assume they’ll
be at the top of the social heap and live in a castle or something
rather than being forced to live as, say, a serf who performs
back-breaking labor and eats nothing but rutabaga for the rest of their
significantly shortened lifespan.I’ve been reading the (excellent) history blog A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry lately, and one of the points that the author (Bret Devereaux) repeatedly makes is that our view of the past is frequently through the lens of the educated aristocrats/elites who had the time and resources to write; and such people tended to downplay or even completely omit details about the vast majority of the population who weren’t wealthy elites. He even points out (in a multi-part series explaining how incredibly inaccurate pop cultural beliefs about Sparta are) that Sparta as a polis had an absolutely tiny ruling class, and that the overwhelming majority of Spartans were in fact slaves. But modern folks like to imagine that they would be a tough spartiate warrior (turns out they actually weren’t that tough) when in fact they’d almost certainly be one of the slaves the spartiates hunted for sport.
Same with my eyes and teeth. I did not win the genetic lottery in either department. I’m very blind, so I’d likely be pretty miserable if I lost/broke my modern glasses or my Rx changed enough that I’d need new ones. I am currently ABLE to take good care of my teeth, but it’s only due to modern dental technologies.Also, I was born in the era during which polio and smallpox were no longer being vaccinated for. Were I to go back, I’d either need to get those vaccines first, or I’d want to make sure I went to an era where those vaccines were available, which wouldn’t allow me to go super far into the past.
FYI, we still vaccinate everyone against polio. We don’t use the slightly more effective live version, though, due to the very low risk of it actually causing polio.
I wish we could send today’s anti-vaxxers back in time. “I’m sending you on a one-way trip to a place where there are no vaccine mandates (because there aren’t any vaccines)!!”
I wouldn’t want to live in an era where I could die from cutting myself on something rusty, or go deaf from an untreatable ear infection. So that means early/mid 20th century, I guess. Not terribly exciting.
Oh my fucking god, Outlander. The fact that both the mother and daughter are like “Yeah, this is fine!” when living in a revolution-era colonies RIGHT BEFORE THE FUCKING WAR is just…just so stupid. It’s almost a parody of itself now.
Not even the great chemistry between the two leads could ever convince me that being a woman in the 1700s anywhere was better than post-WWII anywhere, yet that’s the lie OUTLANDER keeps perpetuating, and the most controversial way is by having their females sexually assaulted seemingly every time they go for a walk to pick berries. The worst thing that happens to them in the 20th century? Men are condescending to them for wanting a career when they should be in the kitchen, but that gets blue tones and 1700s Scotland and later North Carolina get lush green landscapes so you can at least admire the background foliage during another rape scene.
How about Somewhere in Time? Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
But where did the damn watch come from?!
I was going to say they are all women, but does Brigadoon count? Gene Kelly went back in that one. Having given it much thought, I doubt I would go back before 1960. I once asked my mother what modern convenience since 1960 she would miss most. Oddly, she didn’t say tampons of anything medical or technological, but radial tires. She said that before radial tires, when you hit a pothole your wheel would get bent out of shape. You may be able to guess from that thought that we lived in the Detroit area.
In Back to the Future, Doc Brown stays behind for Clara. But that’s sort of an iffy case because he stayed to save her life, and got stuck as a result. (And then built his own time machine, but I digress)
Also Doc’s a Doc – he can build whatever gadgets and gizmos he wants. Like a new time machine for example.
Somewhere In Time, no?
That lady from Outlander keeps traveling back in time to cheat on her husband. I’m just going to assume she stays.
The one that always kind of gets me is Vicki on Doctor Who, who finds true love and decides to leave the TARDIS…during the Trojan War. Good luck there. Maureen O’Brian was fired and did not find out it was her exit until she got the scripts, I believe. At least Maureen got some good audio book material out of it…about 40 years later.
That nerdy guy on Robot Chicken has been killed dozens of times as comeuppance for childishly fantasizing about living on Middle Earth or Faerun or whatever. We need something similarly irreverent lampooning this quite-similar phenomenon.Amy Schumer stars in: “My So-Called Perfect Time-Travel Marriage: A Period Piece. Because Menstruation, Get It?”Too brief? Too subtle? Probably. We can workshop it.
In the Before Times, spouse and I liked to travel, and even visiting a place where you can’t drink the water (but can still get it, hot and cold) out of the tap feels like a hardship.
SPOILER ALERTInuyasha, the most important love story of our generation.
As someone who enjoys steampunk, Dickens Faire and the SCA – it’s fun to pretend. It’s even fun to roleplay. Going back to any of those eras as an asthmatic woman of African descent – oh, heck no, buttercup, I’m not sure there’s a reasonable amount of money you could pay me, even with the guarantee of being able to either take it back with me or have it upon a guaranteed return to modernity.
Yes. The more I think about this fantastical premise, I guess the closest analogy is someone who lives in a “developed” culture traveling or living in a “developing” country. So I guess some people are into it or would be okay with the loss of advancements. But even in that situation, if you enjoy living in harsher societal/tech/medical conditions there’s always the knowledge that you can escape it if needed. With these traveling back in time forever scenarios, you are stuck permanently. And even this interest in roughing it does not speak to the lower societal tolerances and rights back then, which I think should be a non-starter for anyone.
I think the key they were trying to convey is that while she’s a “very modern woman,” she hates being a very modern woman. She’s sick of having to work and make decisions and all the bullshit that goes along with all of it. She has that big “I want a rest” speech that I believe is meant to convey that.Now that said, I think any person of our times would eventually come to regret going back to the long ago, whether they considered themselves “very modern” or not. Even the most regressive Trumpkin among us likes things like indoor plumbing and electricity and internet and glasses and telephones. I’ve been surprised to learn over the last year and a half, though, that many of them would not be sorry to go to the time before vaccines.
I think you might be right about their intent, but the implications of it makes it a pretty terrible message, and her character pretty short sighted.
Well for sure. Every aspect of her character and her story is a terrible message. lol Any reasonable person would have told Leopold to stay his ass in the 2000s. He could always invent the elevator in present times too, if that was the big reason he had to go back.
“There’s something undeniably cozy about this film, even if it never quite lives up to its potential—either in its theatrical edition or its slightly longer director’s cut, which introduces the idea that Leopold is Stuart’s great‑great‑grandfather and gives Kate a few more notes of cynicism.”Umm…doesn’t it imply that Kate is his great-great-grandmother as well? I saw this movie once, a long time ago, but my only strong memory of it has been “well, inadvertent incest was a strange note to end on.” I might be misremembering, though.
I see you have stumbled into my Kate and Leopold fanfic. I have a really interesting chapter where Kate gets stuck in a washing tub.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS INCEST PLZ, WHY DIDNT YOU ALREADY, SIEDE
Thanks for this review. I’ve always enjoyed and simultaneously disliked this movie. I really don’t like Kate’s character. The slavish matching of her prickly demeanor and her ugly, prickly clothes and her literally prickly hair always annoyed me. It’s such an obvious caricature that it just reads as lazy. This was an interesting note that the movie is mostly concerned with the male characters, and I don’t mind that at all really and is an interesting twist on a normal romantic comedy.
I thought I really liked this movie but then my friends and I watched it on our chat group together early in the pandemic and now I think my like was solely because of Leopold. Kate’s character and clothes are just so bad to the point that you start wondering what Leopold sees in her – especially given the number of rather decent suitors he seemed to have earlier in the movie.
Agree. Kate is mean to Leopold the whole time, and she looks ugly, and I don’t mean that to be gratuitously mean. Meg Ryan is obviously a pretty woman but her hair and clothes are ugly, and her face has this frown/grimace on it the entire time. She’s just miserable.
Can I suggest this column go back a little further and do ‘A Damsel in Distress’?
I unabashedly love that movie.
“which introduces the idea that Leopold is Stuart’s great‑great‑grandfather”Yeah, they cut out that part when test audiences realized that Kate was banging her great-great-grandson.
Down note of this movie is having Jackman do a “blergh” face after the dramatic turnaround of a young eligible maiden reveals Kristen Schaal.
this was one of her early roles, Hollywood wasn’t ready for us to think “she cute” yet but it’s more or less got there
I lowkey love this movie.
If you’re doing underperforming rom-coms with a soupcon of period drag are you going to give this much thought to Alex & Emma? I can pretty much guarantee it is not worth it
Somebody else read this for me.
Even at the time this felt like a very ships-passing-in-the-night film. Meg Ryan faced the usual culprits for women her age in Hollywood, but even beyond those constraints, she felt very burnt out, and no longer connected with most of her roles. Jackman was still a shiny new toy, even if he was (and always will be) best known for Wolverine.Your mention of his bond with her brother makes me wonder if we will ever have one of these “dashing young man ventures to the future” films where the viewer expects him to have a romance with the leading lady, only for him to slowly realize he is in love with her brother, gay BFF, ex, etc.
I remember reading that this movie went through some last-minute editing because they originally implied Kate was Leopold’s descendant, and didn’t realize that would make them related until the flick was in the can.
Oh sure. For the man she loves (and who is rich) she’ll give up modern menstrual products, no antibiotics and wearing a corset no matter what. No modern dentistry, no modern ophthalmology, this is a time when doctors had really just started washing their hands regularly and women died in childbirth. Cholera/measles/polio all sorts of awful diseases had regular outbreaks. Upside-you’re rich and he’s cute. Is it worth it to wear a corset every day?