Such a frustrating disappointment

best movie i've ever seen.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Great acting, loved the setting and direction, costumes, music, and plot. I felt the film was risky to make, and the quality succeeded. Sometimes it feels like Dr. Who or a comic book.The suspense and tension is thick. Jack the Ripper is one scary villain. H.G. Wells is a great memorable hero.That said, the first act is a bit of a chore to get through. The Jack murder scenes take a while, too. So the movie feel like 3 hours. Also, I could not imagine recommending Time After Time to young people.The social commentaries were deep and it was awesome for a socialist like Wells to confront the not-so-Utopian future of 1979.

Before "Back to The Future", this movie was all the rage. Dealing with the master of science fiction H.G. Wells(Malcolm McDowell), creates a "Time Machine". While entertaining his guests, he unknowingly has let in the infamous killer Jack The Ripper(David Warner) who was in the act as a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson. Because earlier at the dinner party, H.G. Wells has created the Time Machine and he was going to use it to travel either the past, or better yet, the future. During this time, there was a act of murder. Jack The Ripper has struck again. It turned out that Jack The Ripper, has been in the dinner party using Stevenson as an alias. He also has taken the time machine, and send himself into the future! The year, 1979. The place, San Francisco, California. Since he was going to the future, he had to prepare himself the best way he can. He grabbed items and money to barter or trade in for, and he had no problems blending in. He meets a beautiful banker named Amy(Mary Steenburgen). She helps Wells, the same way as Stevenson. While on the trail of his nemesis, he falls for the banker. Since Amy was liberated, she was taken a liking for the very old writer. I enjoyed this movie a lot. I liked the animation and special effects. It was very promising. Some parts were made-up, but it was a nice start which 6 years later, "Back to the Future" made time traveling more hip. 5 stars!

Imagine, for a moment, that H.G. Wells was actually able to build a functioning prototype of the time machine which he wrote about. Now imagine that Jack The Ripper, upon being discovered while visiting at Well's home, took full advantage of said time machine in the basement and escaped to the future, forcing Wells to venture forward in time to apprehend him before many more of his heinous crimes are committed. It's such a fantastic concept for a story, and what makes it even better is how well they do it. Obviously special effects were limited at the time, and they don't focus too heavily on action or intrigue, but rather play it for philosophical effect, as well as a touching romantic angle. Malcolm McDowell is usually ferocious villains in feverish, over the top roles, but this one allows him to explore his kinder, gentler side, those blue eyes hanging up the glare for an honest, loving gaze. He's whisked away by his machine and arrives in 1979 San Francisco, equally charmed and shocked by the progression of civilization in some amusing opening scenes of him wandering the city and taking in the sights. His former colleague (edgy veteran David Warner is acid perfection) Stevenson, who is the Ripper, couldn't be more ecstatic at being set free in the chaotic 70's. In a wickedly written sequence, he taunts Wells by flipping through television channels all showing violent events, sneering that he's finally home, and an amateur compared to the level of depravity that has infiltrated people's lives. Makes you shudder and think in equal measures. Wells eventually meets a beautiful bank teller (Mary Steenburgen) and falls in love, thickening the plot nicely and providing old Jack the Ripper with a nice bit of leverage. McDowell and Steenburgen met for the first time and fell in love on this film, later going on to get married. This provides their scenes that burning chemistry that lights up the screen with an authenticity that you can only get when the camera captures real love forming with perfect serendipity. It helps that the script is mature, unconventional and very well realized, treating both characters, as well as the entire arc of the film, with the care and genuine inspiration needed to win over an audience. It's also very ahead of its time; Steenburgen, although ending up the damsel in distress, is a fierce independent spirit, not just getting swept off her feet in stale Hollywood fashion, but falling for Wells through dialogue, conflict and real emotion, something which romantic films rarely get right. When the two are on screen together, pure magic emanates. And the film as a whole takes us on a rollicking adventure that takes time to think and feel in between the swash and buckle. This is one I can watch Time After Time and always love.

I really wasn't expecting very much out of this, but after having watched "The Time Machine" I stumbled upon this movie and decided that I had to give it a try. It had a decent enough cast - Malcolm McDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen being the stars (along with a very small part that lasts no more than a few seconds for a very young Corey Feldman), and while it seemed a bit (OK, a lot) silly, the basic story was at least a little bit intriguing. It has early sci-fi author H.G. Wells (author of "The Time Machine," played by McDowell) actually inventing a time machine. At a dinner party with some of his friends (similar to inventor George Wells in "The Time Machine") he reveals the existence of the machine, only to see it used by Dr. Stevenson (Warner) to escape into the future, because the police had discovered that he was Jack the Ripper. With the machine returning to Wells' lab after Stevenson had left it, Wells follows him into the future to prevent him from continuing his murderous spree in another time.Some things about the machine made little sense to me. Like in the original story, the machine doesn't move through space - only through time. That was established. But then Wells makes the comment that moving forward or backward in time depends on whether the machine is travelling eastward or westward. How can it be travelling in either direction if it doesn't move through space? And how, if it doesn't move through space, did the machine take both Wells and Stevenson to San Francisco in 1979? Just because it had been found and put on display in a San Francisco museum? Wouldn't where it ended up in the future be dependent on where it started? I was confused by all that to be honest. But, getting over that confusion, I found a story that was actually quite entertaining.It's exciting enough. Not edge of your seat stuff, but you do find yourself rooting for Wells as he tries to track down Stevenson, knowing that if the Ripper is left loose there's going to be a blood bath in San Francisco, which has already started by the time Wells arrives, two prostitutes having been murdered. The movie has an amusing "fish out of water" aspect to it as we watch Wells try to come to terms with this very new and different environment - 1979 San Francisco being much different than 1893 London, where he began. There was also a really nice chemistry between McDowell and Steenburgen, who meet as Wells exchanges some 19th century English pounds for American dollars. There's an attempt at linking the story to Wells' real life through Steenburgen. She plays Amy Robbins - and Wells really did marry a woman who was one of his students named Amy Robbins in 1895. So the story, which has them falling in love in 1979 in San Francisco and then returning to London in 1893 offers a sci-fi version of how the two met.I also found myself thinking about Nicholas Meyer, who directed this. Meyer is probably best known for his involvement with some of the Star Trek movies - and he helped write the screenplay for "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home." It was also a time travel movie, with the crew of the Enterprise facing the same fish out of water experience in San Francisco. I wondered how much that screenplay might have been influenced by Meyer's work with "Time After Time." On the surface, this movie does sound silly. But it turns out to be a pretty well done and entertaining movie. (8/10)