Kate & Leopold

Time Richard Schickel

Given that this holiday film season has come up more than a little short on love and laughter, one can easily forgive Kate & Leopold the slightly excessive lengths and complications to which it goes in search of those rare commodities.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

It's a charmer.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

For the first half-hour I, too, demurred. And then the irresistible force that is Hugh Jackman -- or was it his swoony Leopold? -- swept me off my seat and into the movie.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Meg Ryan does this sort of thing about as well as it can possibly be done, and after "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail," here is another ingenious plot that teases us with the possibility that true love will fail, while winking that, of course, it will prevail.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

This winning confection, from a director (Heavy, Cop Land) not known for the lightness of his material or his touch, shows a fine understanding of what the screenwriters of the '40s instinctively grasped, that good screwball is about dialogue and chemistry.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

It's no myth: All play and no work makes Jackman, as Leopold, a doll of a boyfriend.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

Has its heart in the right place -- and in a season filled with somber or goopy Oscar contenders, it makes a perfectly decent date movie.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Director and co-writer James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) is supplying comfort food for bruised romantics.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Once it settles down, it becomes a star-making vehicle for Jackman, and a supremely polished example of the sort of swoony love story cherished by women who secretly hope that some day their prince will come.

Variety Lael Loewenstein

A time-travel romantic comedy whose best elements -- Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman -- overcome distracting plot holes, loose threads and assorted contrivances to make for a mostly charming and diverting tale.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Lacking in originality.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The role of Kate, a spunky but romantically unfulfilled marketing expert, seems made for Ryan. Unfortunately, Ryan no longer seems made for it.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Not very believable, even in relation to its own premises, but if you were charmed by "Somewhere in Time" and/or Jack Finney's novel "Time and Again," this might charm you as well.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

There's no question that Meg Ryan is the queen of romantic comedies. Yet for every piece of frothy fluff that works -- there comes a couple where you just want to say, "Enough already." Kate & Leopold is one such movie.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Has only the most tangential relation to reality, and therein lies its slender charm.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A flawed time-travel love story, benefits from Meg Ryan's reliable perkiness and establishes Australia's Hugh Jackman as a potent romantic leading man. These and other pluses, however, cannot overcome the film's inability to come alive for a full hour and 20 minutes.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

America's favorite romantic comedian is miscast in Kate & Leopold -- a disappointment with the warm and charming Jackman around.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Progressively sabotaged by poor technical quality, terrible plotting, a glaring lack of directorial skill and finesse, scenes that have no credibility and/or motivation and an astounding sloppiness to its historical detail.

New Times (L.A.) Bill Gallo

Mangold gets stuck in the gooey sweet spots of his tale a little more often than he breaks loose with a bracing jolt of perversity.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The problem with Kate & Leopold is that although this is supposed to be a romantic comedy, the best scenes are the ones in which there's no Ryan.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Reasonably entertaining time-travel romance.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

There's nothing terribly wrong with Kate & Leopold -- it's just an awfully conventional upmarket romantic comedy.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

An oppressively cute Manhattan time-travel romantic comedy that’s lost in time, space and cliches.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Has the sex appeal of a Road Runner cartoon, one-tenth the laughs and equal plausibility.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

It just isn't a Meg Ryan movie unless she's got male.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

The shabby metaphysics and complete absence of internal logic are perhaps meant to charm, but only add to the eye-gouging irritant factor.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Is Meg Ryan going to play the goofy romantic gal forever?