bad/awesome flixxx review: Somewhere In Time (1980)
"I got some news. There was an agent in the house tonight, and he said he thinks this play might be good enough for Broadway. Fingers crossed, who knows? Come on, let's all have some cake." - Richard Collier
"I am an actress, Mr. Robinson, not a doormat. Do not attempt to wipe your boots on me." - Elise McKenna
"Reechard. Reeeeeeechaaaarrrrd!!!!!!!!" - Elise McKenna
"Come back to me." - Old woman
Wow. I promised Melissa I would review this a year ago, and then I finally watched it, and then I did like ten reviews and forgot to do this one and caught all manner of hell. I didn't NOT review it on purpose. It just slipped through the cracks. Personally I didn't even think it was THAT bad. I mean its rough. But if you could sit through THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, then you could sit through this. It's basically the same story. Ok, we have Superman himself and a BLANGIN' Jane Seymour (and a cameo by ol William H. Macy) in SOMEWHERE IN TIME!!!
So in the beginning of this flick, Superman is a college student in 1972 and is hanging out with the cast after the first viewing of his first play which is a success. Suddenly a really old woman comes up to him, interupts him, hands him a pocket watch and says, "Come back to me". He'd never seen this chick before and she splits right away. Needless to say, he was creeped out, as any superhero would have been.
Ok, fast forward eight years later, and Superman is a swinging bachelor in New York City and a very successful playwright to boot. But his chick splits on him and he suddenly feels the icy grip of writer's block. He coincidentally decides to go to this hotel called the Grand Hotel out on Makinac island. He's hanging around and spots this picture of this super hot babe hanging up in one of the rooms that's like a gallery of old theater chicks. He becomes enthralled with the picture, staring at it for hours and really creeping hard on it. He asks the old bell hop who she is, and does a little research and finds out that somehow that was the old woman who came to see him years earlier as an old woman. He goes out to her old house to ask her what that was all about, but her housekeeper claims she died eight years ago that same night. Superman asks to look around her house and he finds a book on time travel from his college professor, and a music box that plays his favorite melody (by Rachmaninoff). This gets him thinking or maybe wishing or hoping that somehow he could go back in time to see her. So he starts plotting, and becomes convinced that there may be a way he can travel back to visit her in 1912, and he thinks he's fallen in love with her. That means boys and girls that we've lost Superman. He's gone way off the deep end. Its easy to fall for someone far away like a rock star or movie star when you're 16 years old, but it becomes creepy stalker style when you're 30.
He goes to visit his old prof in hopes that he'll tell him the secret of time travel. I figured the guy would tell him he was crazy, but instead he tells him that once he traveled back to the 1500s by self hypnosis. He said he had to dress in the style, remove all manner of technology of the day, completely immerse himself in the style and materials of the past, and concentrate really hard, so hard that he actually believed it, and it MIGHT happen. So Superman, cuts his hair, buys a suit, sets the room up and even records a tape of suggestions to convince himself he's back in time. But it doesn't work because the tape recorder is laying on him. He's bummed and goes looking in the attic to see if he ever signed the guest book which he just thought of, so chances are, he'd do it in the past when he got there, so sure enough, he finds it, and he DID sign it, so he knows it'll happen. So he goes back to his room, and hides the tape recorder under his bed. Finally he goes to sleep and wakes up to the sound of horses. It actually fucking worked. It was so easy that I'm tempted to try it. I think I wanna go to the future though, so I have to invent cool shit before I can go. So that's never going to happen.
So it takes him awhile, but he creeps around and finally finds her. She immediately thinks he's hot shit, but and she asks him if he's "the one". He thinks she means the one from the future, and he's confused, so he gives her the pocket watch as a gift. This is weird then, because it means there is no origin of the pocket watch. Where did it come from? Why is this watch on a weird time loop? Anyway, what she really meant about him being "the one" was that her manager told her that one day a dude was going to come around and steal her away. She was a big time badass actress, and totally smoking hot, and this manager dude knew that some kook was going to come around and steal her away from her real focus in life, fill her full of babies and dash his/her dreams to bits. And she had been so focused on her acting and was so burnt out on it all by the time Superman showed up that she was HOPING he'd steal her away from it all. But the manager was having none of it. She stops mid-play and improvises a love speech to Supes, and the manager sees he's losing her, so he ties Supes up in the horse stalls and they're supposed to leave in an hour. She had written a note for Supes to meet her after, but he wakes up the next morning freaking out that she was gone forever and he fucked up. But - she stayed after choosing him over a long successful career, and they begin a long montage courtship together... maybe it was only a couple days long. Anyway, they're kissing and she says first thing she's gonna do is buy him a new suit because his is ten years out of fashion. He says, "wait, you don't dig my suit", reaches in his pocket and pulls out a 1979 penny and that sucks him back into present day times. She scream, "REEEECHHHARDDDD!!!" to no avail. Supes is fucking BUMMED! He tries his best to go back in time, but he's too weak, so he bums around the resort for a day, then sits in his chair looking outside, and realizing he blew it, he dies smiling at the ocean, as the bell hop finds him. Should you watch this??? I'd say with a date, it's not a bad sci-fi girl movie. Go for it. It wouldn't hurt you to hang out with someone on a romantic level for once ya nerds.
Friday, April 27, 2012