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Movie Review: Kate & Leopold (2001) [1]
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Date: 2025-05-03
SPOILER ALERT!
Kate & Leopold is a time-travel love story. Leopold (Hugh Jackman) is a tall, good-looking aristocrat from the nineteenth century who goes through a time portal and ends up in the twenty-first century. He falls in love with a woman named Kate (Meg Ryan), and befriends her brother Charlie (Brecklin Meyer), who is a funny-looking little-guy. For the record, Hugh Jackman is 6′ 2″ tall, whereas Brecklin Meyer is 5′ 5″.
Leopold and Charlie end up one evening at a nightclub, where they sit at a table with some beautiful women, one of whom is Patrice, with whom Charlie is in love. Charlie tries his best to amuse the ladies, Patrice in particular, getting nowhere, while Leopold comes off like the strong, silent type, to whom the women are obviously attracted. Later, as they are walking home, Leopold tells Charlie that he is a Merry Andrew, a buffoon, and that is why he gets nowhere with women. As proof that his way is superior, he produces Patrice’s phone number, which she gave to him at the nightclub.
This raises the question, if Leopold had acted like a Merry Andrew, and Charlie had tried being the strong, silent type, showing off his knowledge of the Louvre, would it have been Leopold or Charlie whom the women found desirable? In fact, the movie might have been more interesting had the actors switched parts. If Charlie had been tall and good looking, played by Hugh Jackman, but was a flop with the ladies, while Leopold had been a funny-looking little-guy, played by Brecklin Meyer, who succeeded with women in general, and with Kate in particular, on account of his Victorian manners and aristocratic demeanor, then that might have been interesting. Not realistic, but interesting. As it is, while Charlie was fated to be homely and short, he has to endure the additional insult of being told by a tall, handsome man that he is doing it wrong.
By the way, Patrice is played by Charlotte Lopez, who is 5′ 7″, so she is a couple of inches taller than Brecklin Meyer, even when she’s wearing flats.
Because there is nothing surprising about a tall, good-looking man succeeding at love, regardless of which century he comes from, the movie ends up being routine and predictable, notwithstanding the stuff about traveling through time.
In Alfie (1966), the title character, played by Michael Caine, goes through the entire movie breaking the fourth wall in order to give advice and commentary on how to handle women. I don’t suppose I need to say that Caine is handsome and tall, 6′ 2″ to be precise, so for those of us in the audience who, physically speaking, are not so fortunately endowed, we have to wonder if his advice would apply to us.
In any event, he makes a distinction about displaying a sense of humor that Leopold did not. He has just finished having sex with a married woman, who steps away for a moment so that Alfie can talk to us in the audience:
A married woman. Every one of them in need of a good laugh. It never strikes their husbands. Make a married woman laugh, and you're halfway there with her. It don’t work with the single bird. It’d start you off on the wrong foot. You get one of them laughing, you won’t get nothing else. [Then he refers again to the married woman.] Just listen to it. It was dead glum when I met it tonight. I listened to its problems, then I got it laughing. It’ll go home happy.
There may be something in what he says. A woman that is single and unattached, even if she never intends to get married, cannot help but evaluate a man according to whether he would make a good husband, which is to say, whether he would be responsible, give her security, and be a provider for her and her children. This is serious business, which requires a serious man. A married woman, on the other hand, need not be concerned about such things when she has an affair. An irresponsible, lazy, unambitious fellow who can give her a few laughs and make her feel pretty again may be all she needs. Of course, not all women have affairs to the same end. For some, an affair is a transition to a future ex-husband. But if all she wants is a little on the side, she may find that a man with a sense of humor is just what she needs.
Of course, I still don’t believe that a man like Michael Caine, who is tall and handsome, would strike out with single women just because he supposedly made the mistake of making them laugh.
In any event, Patrice is not married in Kate & Leopold, so according to Alfie’s philosophy, Charlie should not have tried to be funny. However, what neither Leopold nor Alfie seems to realize is that when a man lacks their physical charms, he might play the clown to avoid being pitied.
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