Kate & Leopold
Kate & Leopold is a 2001 American romantic-comedy fantasy film that tells a story of a physicist by the name of Stuart (Liev Schreiber), who accidentally pulls his great‑great‑grandfather, Leopold (Hugh Jackman), through a time portal from 19th‑century New York to the present, where Leopold falls in mutual love with Stuart’s ex‑girlfriend, Kate (Meg Ryan).
On 28 April 1876, Leopold, His Grace the 3rd Duke of Albany, is a stifled dreamer. He has created a design for a primitive elevator, and has built a small model of this device. His strict Uncle Millard has no patience for what he sees as Leopold’s frivolous interest in the sciences and new inventions, having brought him to New York City in order to marry a wealthy American heiress, as the Mountbatten family is heavily indebted.
While sketching the Brooklyn Bridge during a public meeting dedicated to the completion of its Manhattan tower, Leopold notices Stuart Besser taking photographs with an anachronistically small camera. Stuart is an amateur physicist (and great‑great‑grandson of Leopold) from 21st‑century New York who has discovered the existence of gravitational time portals. Later, Leopold catches Stuart in the Duke’s study, photographing his schematic diagrams. When Stuart attempts to flee, Leopold follows and tries to save him from falling off the unfinished bridge, only to fall with him into the time portal.
Leopold awakens on a Wednesday morning in the year 2001 in Stuart’s apartment at 88 White Street, Manhattan. Stuart explains that the portal they have travelled through has closed, but will reopen on the next Monday, until which time Leopold should stay in Stuart’s apartment. As Stuart takes his dog out, he is injured by falling into the empty elevator shaft, and, after ranting about his scientific discovery in the hospital, is involuntarily committed to a mental institution. According to Stuart’s concept, Leopold’s unintentional time travel to the 21st century has caused a widespread “occlusion” of elevators, and may cause the disappearance of Stuart himself if Leopold doesn’t go back to 1876 on Monday.
Leopold is intrigued by the cynical and ambitious Kate McKay, Stuart’s ex-girlfriend who lives downstairs. He observes that she is a “career woman” and that her field, market research, is a fine avocation for a woman. Kate dismisses him and demands that he take Stuart’s dog for a walk. Back at the apartment, he befriends Charlie, Kate’s brother and an aspiring actor, who believes him to be an actor as well, steadfast to his character.
On Thursday morning, Kate becomes impressed by Leopold’s eloquent exposition of how important the tastiness of food is to the quality of human life. She takes him to an audition for a TV commercial pitching a fat-free butter, Farmer’s Bounty, produced by the English company Jansen Foods, which is being taken over by Kate’s company, Camden Research Group (CRG).
On Friday, Leopold hires a violinist and invites Kate to a rooftop dinner, which ends with a waltz and the first kiss.
On Saturday, they take a stroll about Lower Manhattan and come across Uncle Millard’s home at 1 Hanover Square, where Leopold retrieves a metal box with his boyhood treasures, including his mother’s ring, from a secret drawer hidden in his room’s wall. In the evening, he tries to propose to Kate, but she falls asleep on his lap.
On Sunday, Leopold acts in a Farmer’s Bounty commercial, but walks off the set upon finding the diet margarine disgusting. Leopold chastises Kate about integrity, to which she counters that he lacks connection with reality. Realizing that their time together is nearly over, both spend the evening in subdued contemplation.
On Monday morning, Stuart escapes from the asylum and sends Leopold to his own time, which makes the elevators work again. Charlie notices Kate in a photo taken at Leopold’s ball on 28 April 1876, and shows the photo to Stuart, who realizes that Kate’s future is in the past. That night, when Kate is about to accept her promotion at the Anglo-American merger meeting held, to her surprise, at 1 Hanover Square, Stuart and Charlie tell her that she has to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge within the next 23 minutes. Kate rejects their suggestion as absurd and goes to give her acceptance speech, during which she sees herself, wearing the same evening dress, in one of Stuart’s pictures. She abruptly ends the speech, and the three of them rush to the bridge.
Having made it through the portal, Kate appears in 1876 and runs to 1 Hanover Square, where the Anglo-American engagement is to take place. Just when Leopold is about to announce his bride of convenience, Kate storms into the ballroom, and he instead announces her name, styled as “Kate McKay, of the McKays of Massapequa”. Among the shocked guests, Kate and Leopold reunite with a kiss and dance a bridal waltz. Thus Kate turns out to be Stuart’s great‑great‑grandmother.
