The engrossing, ageless time-travel film “Time After Time” may not move as fast or explode as loudly as a 21st-century action film, but it’s full of little moments that add up to terrific entertainment.
Malcolm McDowell is quietly engaging as H.G. Wells, the London writer and inventor who believes he has solved the secret to jumping time dimensions. The sleek, funkadelic helicopter bubble in his Victorian London basement appears ready to rock a new century.
Wells’ nemesis turns out to be a London doctor, John “Jack the Ripper” Stevenson, played with furious evil by David Warner. On the run from a killing, the doctor stumbles into a Wells dinner party and then flees police by jumping into the time machine.
Destination? Late-1970s San Francisco. It could be played purely for camp in the gay-friendly, recession-worn pockets of the Tenderloin. Instead, San Francisco’s weary decadence and violence give the Ripper a chance to soliloquize about the nature of evil and a bad man’s timeless role in society.
Wells must chase Jack into the future, of course. That quiet moment I love is when Wells arrives in the future, and his time machine and London study are on display in a San Francisco science museum. Bewildered at first, Wells quickly adapts — his glasses were broken in the time travel, so he calmly opens a drawer of his study in the science display and takes out the replacement glasses he knows are there, 80 years later.
Mary Steenburgen adds slightly loopy charm as a modern bank teller who falls for Wells’ Victorian manners and tweedy outfits. The chase builds as Jack the Ripper threatens the new love affair and Wells must reconsider his predictions of mankind perfecting itself with each passing century.
Rated: PG in the old system, perhaps closer to PG-13 these days. Some language, minor violence.
Best suited for: All family members with either a romantic streak or a science fiction streak.
