{"id":1259,"date":"2020-04-19T10:30:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-19T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itwaslikemagic.com\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2026-02-20T09:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:31:20","slug":"kate-and-leopold-2001-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/kate-and-leopold-2001-review\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Kate & Leopold’ (2001) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kate & Leopold Synopsis<\/strong>: An English Duke from 1876 is inadvertently dragged to modern day New York where he falls for a plucky advertising executive.<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

When Leopold (Hugh Jackman<\/a><\/strong>), an 18th-century duke (and eventual inventor of the elevator), spots a man out of time, he gives chase and falls through a portal to present-day New York City. The man is named Stuart (Liev Schreiber<\/strong>), a scientist who discovered a rip in the fabric of time and used it to explore the past. Marketing executive Kate McKay (Meg Ryan<\/strong>) is his ex-girlfriend who lives in the same apartment building as Stuart. Circumstances push Kate and Leopold together; despite their differences, an attraction blooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won’t lie, I was pretty shocked when I saw that James Mangold directed this\u2014James Mangold of Ford and Ferrari<\/em>, Girl Interrupted<\/em>, and Logan<\/em>. Kate & Leopold<\/em> does not come anywhere close to the quality of those films, although it’s pleasant enough for a mindless rom-com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story itself reminded me a lot of Enchanted. <\/em>While Hugh Jackman, like Amy Adams, is charming as the fish out of water royalty (or soon-to-be royalty), Kate & Leopold<\/em> lacks the chemistry between its two leads that made Enchanted <\/em>work so well. I have loved Meg Ryan in many movies, but her performance here feels pretty flat. I enjoyed Leopold’s scenes with Stuart and Kate’s brother Charlie (Breckin Meyer<\/a><\/strong>) more than the ones he shared with Kate. Knowing that the role of Kate was initially meant for Sandra Bullock, I can’t help but wonder what if…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I’m not even sure Bullock could have saved the movie. I have watched enough rom-coms to know that most of them require a suspension of belief. I can buy into even the most ridiculous plots if there’s enough charm, comedy, and romantic heat to distract me from them. Unfortunately, there are just too many contrived moments and obvious plot holes that I found it challenging to focus on anything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it weren’t so predictable, if there had been more chemistry between Kate and Leopold, then maybe I wouldn’t have minded the silliness of it all. There was simply no way that I could believe Kate would leave everything behind, her job and brother, to go back in time to the 18th century to be with Leopold, even if he looks like Hugh Jackman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of Jackman, he’s the only reason to watch this movie. He takes what would have been a bland, preposterous role and instead presents Leopold as incredibly affable and charismatic. Hugh Jackman is why I’m giving this movie 2.5 stars instead of anything lower. I wish he would do another rom-com. So, if you’re a big Hugh Jackman fan, give this a shot. Otherwise, I’d say steer clear of Kate & Leopold<\/em>. If you want a romantic fish-out-of-water movie, go with Enchanted<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watched:<\/strong> 04\/15\/2020
Notable Song<\/strong>: Until by Sting<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating:<\/strong><\/div>
<\/path><\/svg><\/path><\/svg><\/path><\/svg><\/path><\/svg><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kate & Leopold Synopsis: An English Duke from 1876 is inadvertently dragged to modern day New York where he falls for a plucky advertising executive. When Leopold (Hugh Jackman), an 18th-century duke (and eventual inventor of the elevator), spots a man out of time, he gives chase and falls through a portal to present-day New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[586,1],"tags":[881,1418,1198,5192,1366,1419,1031,761,1027,3650],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews-k","category-reviews","tag-881","tag-bradley-whitford","tag-breckin-meyer","tag-genre-fantasy","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-kate-and-leopold","tag-kristen-schaal","tag-meg-ryan","tag-natasha-lyonne","tag-2-5-stars"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74909,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/74909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theromcomcatalog.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}