Romance and my recommendation for worst such film of all time

Valentine's Day and I wasn't planning to write anything on it because I am a bit bah humbug about such holidays. Symbolisms always leave me cold. This is a day supposedly to turn on the romance and make money for merchants? Leave some people sad because no valentines? Remind others they didn't get what the 'dream' was all about? I have never liked this holiday. I dislike it more as I get old.

And where it comes to romantic films, well they are worse than Valentine's Day. They are aimed at presenting a view of relationships that might exist for a fleeting second, for a few, but basically isn't how life is for the majority of couples. However, for reasons I cannot figure out (can I blame it on astrology? I should see where Venus is), I dug out a romantic film that I had bought years ago in one of those $5 bins and had put off seeing because of-- see above.

Spoiler ahead so you are forewarned if you go forward that I will reveal the plot and ending to the 1980 film, Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer. I am doing this review partly out of disgust, partly as a rant, and partly to do my part to keep someone else from wasting their time on it. Better an umpteenth viewing of To Have and Have Not or Key Largo. Now those folks knew what romance was-- even if it wasn't.

And, if this happens to be one of your favorite love stories, you can make your case in comments.

As the film opened, I thought I can handle this. A little reincarnation maybe. Some time travel. Endless love. It's not like I never have watched or liked romantic films. I have some that I enjoy-- whenever I need a good cry. Its stars were very appealing and its theme music even more so (I had to buy an MP3 of the film's arrangement)-- Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. That has to be one of the most romantic melodies ever written. The location it was filmed on was lovely-- big old hotel of the sort they don't build today with a grand history and beautiful location on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

So I stuck with the film despite a few misgivings. With a less good cast, less beautiful setting, less good music maybe I'd have wised up sooner; but it took right to the end before I realized how much I'd been had. I was so furious at that point that I took the movie out of the DVD player and threw it in the garbage can. I have only done that once before. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it is the most disgusting take on romantic love that could be out there. If you don't know what romantic love is, this won't help you figure it out!

Here's the plot's gist. It opens with Reeve a college student who had just seen his play produced and was at the beginning of a fabulous career. Was there a handsomer man ever? A very old woman has been sitting watching and then walks up to him, puts her hand on his shoulder, gives him a watch and creepily says -- come back to me. She walks off. He is perplexed. She goes back to where she lives in The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, starts some music and sits back to listen to it. Fade out.

Eight years go by. He is now a successful playwright, has made a good living, others want his next play but he can't concentrate. He is playing some music-- that music. dum de dum dum. Romance is on even if he has yet to meet her.

So he goes for a little vacation which coincidentally ends up being the hotel where she had been eight years earlier. He feels something but isn't sure what until he comes across photos of a famous actress who was playing there in 1912. She is gorgeous. He wants more information on her which he quickly gathers. He finds his name in a guest register for that very time where he now is.

In the rooms where she lived, he finds a book she has read often. The woman who had helped care for her tells him that the watch he has was precious to the old woman, Elise, that she died the very night she must have given it to him... and that she had her whole life changed in 1912 on a certain date. From that time forward she didn't do much and became reclusive.

The book he looks at is by this time not surprisingly, on time travel and conveniently the professor who wrote it lives nearby where he can learn how you do it-- basically it's meditation that involves body travel but it is very hard on the body.

You know how on movies, you pretty well can figure where something is heading at certain points. The assumption he has and us too is that she wants him to come back to 1912 to that date and maybe this can all be changed from whatever went wrong. That was my expectation anyway. I assumed he would not come across the young man version of himself there but that would have worked also if he was just a spirit back there wandering around and watching.

Possibly if he did that he'd see the previous mistake and find her again in today's time. Okay that's not likely given she had only died 8 years before. Anyway the feeling is he would learn something beneficial to his life when he went back-- or he'd be able to stay there and that would change what happened. All valid romantic possibilities. Unrealistic but possible in a fantasy. I do not remotely demand happy endings to my favorite romances like Casablanca or Bridges of Madison County.

He gets back there after making sure he has cleared his pockets of anything that might remind him of from where he has come. He meets her. They have obstacles (Christopher Plummer), overcome them, make love, and then... he finds a penny in his pocket from 1979 and is instantly thrown back to from where he came.

All right, I could have taken all of that. A viewer of romances must be forgiving. It's not like I really expect it to be realistic. I might have not valued it enough to watch it again, but it would not have found its way to the garbage can. What happened next though was not okay even in a romance.

Back in his hotel room, he sat there, glassy eyed, looking out the window, unable to move. When the hotel went to check on him, he was dying.

I thought-- oh no, they wouldn't. They did... He died as she waited for him to walk to her in the sky.

Now when Titanic had Rose meet up with her lover who went down with the ship, it was fantasy but it came after she had lived her whole life in a healthy and full way. She died an old woman.

So this story basically had the old lady draw him to his doom when she said come back to me. She wanted him to not get a whole life? She gave up on life when he disappeared in the poof of a 1979 penny and he let himself die (the doctor thought of starvation) when he couldn't go back to her again. Weak? That was pathetic. I think the audience gets sucked in to watch the whole thing (unless they are wiser than me) because the actors that play these characters were/are strong people; and so you have them looking like the kind who'd never do such a thing while the script makes them do exactly that.

So I give my warning here for anybody who has not already wasted an hour and a half or so on this movie. Don't take any romantic movie too seriously. Don't spend your life waiting for that fairy tale romance and for heaven's sake don't watch that movie unless you enjoy movies about beautiful, total losers.

The only reason I can think that it doesn't appear on lists of the worst of all romance films has to be sympathy for Christopher Reeve and his tragic end as well as a liking for the cast. It's not enough.

(Interestingly William Macy had a small part in it before he became a star. Also it was based on a book where the hero had a brain tumor and the whole set of illusions might have been a result of that.)