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Only A Geek…

Only a geek would watch a sci-fi romance comedy and then spend the next day nitpicking the movie’s time travel theory.

Last night I watched “Kate & Leopold” for the second time. The first time I had seen it on television and thought it was a cute story. I’m a sucker for time travel movies, of course. After watching it last night, however, I find myself today nitpicking the movie’s time travel theory.

I know that time travel doesn’t yet exist, or isn’t possible, however you want to say it. But I’m still a firm believer in linear time theory. That would be the kind that if someone went into the past, then they are now cemented in the past and it will always have to happen that way.

If you don’t want to be spoiled to the end of the movie, then don’t continue reading.

What really bugged me about this movie was the way they handled time travel. One, the time traveler jumps into a crack in time over the East River and is transported back to a specific day in the 19th century. As far as I can tell, there is a direct correllation between the time he jumps in and the time he arrives back on that day. So if he jumped in at 8am, he would arrive at 8am in the past.

Ok, that works for me. In the beginning he obviously jumped in earlier in the day and spends his time exploring the past. He catches the attention of Leopold who tries to chase him but loses sight of him. Later that evening Leopold is shown getting ready for a ball and then while dancing he sees the time traveler at the ball taking pictures with a spy camera (which of course Leopold has no idea what it is). He breaks off from his dance and follows the time traveler upstairs where he tries to confront him, then ends up chasing him off to the East River where he accidentally falls into the crack in time with the time traveler and arrives in the 20th century.

All that seemed to work out fair enough. They even threw a little tidbit of Leopold being the inventor of the elevator and in the 20th century as soon as Leopold’s “future” becomes interrupted all the elevators stop working. Sure, I’ll give them that one. We don’t know how time would react to changing the past. Obviously at that point in the past Leopold disappears and never finishes his work on elevators. Instead of like in “Back to the Future” the elevators remained and did not fade out of exisitence.

The ending is where I got bugged. Leopold decides that he’s going back to his own time and jumps back into the crack with the help of the time traveler after spending a week in the future. The time traveler states “you’re going back the night you left, but you may have to repeat a few things.”

What? He apparently goes back and as soon as he arrives he REPLACES the self that already exists. (Explain to me how that works) Because he arrives before he gets ready for the ball. So he goes and gets ready for the ball again. He sees the time traveler again, but does not chase him this time, and then finds out that his love from the 20th century came to the past to be with him. The time traveler figured this out after Leopold left because he found a photo with Kate in it.

Here’s the problems:

1) Leopold arrives and replaces his current self. He should have been told to “not bump into himself” and “lay low”. Seeing as he would be going back he should have seen himself chasing the time traveler off and then came back into the room like he had merely run out for a moment…meanwhile his original self is chasing the time traveler and falling into the time crack.

2) Kate is seen in a photo from the past. Kate is seen in a photo that was taken by the time traveler before he was chased off. Problem is Kate arrives in the past after the time traveler left the past. There could be no way he took a picture of her.

There is no plausible way of explaining how to fix it unless you begin to rewrite the whole story. THAT is what has been bugging me today. Great movie…but such a flawed time travel theory.