Time travel isn’t necessarily the most romantic of subjects, but imagine if two lovers are not just star-crossed, but time-crossed?
Time travel has long been explored in movies, for comedy (Back to the Future), the strange (12 Monkeys), tragedy (Terminator) and even the environment (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). But we at Disc Dish chose just the three most romantic films for our 14 Days of Romance Valentine’s Day list.
What are your favorite romantic time travel movies?
Here’s our top three:
Based on the best-selling novel by Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife features Eric Bana (Star Trek) as Henry, a time traveler not by machine, but by some twist in his genetic code that forces him to jump around in time and space without knowing when it’ll happen. The only thing he does know is that he tends to show up in the same places and with the same people, “like gravity,” he says. And who does he repeatedly visit? Rachel McAdams’ (Sherlock Holmes) Claire. But imagine being married to a man who keeps disappearing then showing up and asking what year it is? Despite the marriage difficulties, though, Claire and Henry’s time-crossed love is plenty romantic.
Available on DVD and Blu-ray from Warner Home Video
Kathleen Turner (Romancing the Stone) dons her bobby socks and saddle shoes and heads back to the late 1950s in Francis Coppola’s 1986 time-tripping odyssey. Unlike Back to the Future from the previous year, Peggy Sue examines the decisions of youth from the point of view of middle age. Turner gets plenty of opportunities to crack wisely during her journey — plotting to go to Liverpool to discover the Beatles, telling her math teacher that algebra will play no part in her future, and so on. But it’s Peggy Sue’s love of her high school sweetheart/future hubby Nicolas Cage (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) — so promising as a teenager and so disappointing as a husband — that inspires the lady to travel back to her own time and give her troubled marriage another shot.
Available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Truly time-crossed lovers are Christopher Reeve (Superman) and Jane Seymour (Wedding Crashers) in this 1980 fantasy. Based on the novel by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, Somewhere in Time tells the story of Reeve’s Richard Collier, a Chicago playwright who is met by an old lady who begs him to “come back to me.” When he sees an old portrait of a younger version of her in a hotel and discovers she’s a famous stage actress from the early 1900s. He hypnotizes himself to go back in time, where he meets her and they fall in love. A perfect relationship except that he’s from the future. The movie also stars Christopher Plummer (The Last Station) and William H. Macy (TV’s Shameless) as a critic, but the romance is all about Reeve and Seymour. Who wouldn’t fall for a man who wants to change his time for you?
Available on DVD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Honorable mention:
Another Nicolas Cage comedy, this 2000 movie stars Cage as an investment broker who’s sent back in time to see an alternate version of his life, if he had not broken up with his college girlfriend. The complete opposite from his high-paced, penthouse-living life, Cage nevertheless discovers that a house in the suburbs filled with a wife (Tea Leoni, Ghost Town), kids and plenty of love is better than being rich, powerful and alone. Although this film didn’t make it in our top 3, it’s still a great, warm and romantic time-travel movie.
Available on DVD from Universal
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