Kate & Leopold

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. When Millard chastises him for disrespecting the Monarchy, and the Peerage as a whole, Leopold counters that his uncle's ideals of nobility are outdated, and true worth is found in those who pursue initiatives.

While sketching the Brooklyn Bridge during a public meeting dedicated to the completion of its Manhattan tower (the last stone was set in July 1876), Leopold notices Stuart Besser taking photographs with an anachronistically small camera, and laughing uncontrollably at John A. Roebling's repeated use of the word "erection" to denote the bridge. 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 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. Leopold is overwhelmed to see that Roebling's bridge is still standing. 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 British company Jansen Foods, which is being taken over by Kate's company, Camden Research Group.

On Friday, Leopold hires a violinist and invites Kate to a rooftop dinner, which ends with a waltz and the first kiss. They become romantically entangled and spend Saturday touring New York. In the evening, he tries to propose to her, but she falls asleep on his lap.

On Monday, 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 Tuesday morning, Stuart escapes from the mental institution and sends Leopold back 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 immediately realizes that Kate's destiny must be to go to 1876 and be with Leopold. That night, when Kate is about to accept her promotion at the merger banquet held in the building that used to be Leopold's home, 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. 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.

The DVD edition contains two versions of the film: one, the original theatrical release, runs for 118 minutes while the director's cut version runs for 122. One scene in the director's cut shows Ryan's character in a test screening for a new film and also features a cameo by Mangold. An additional scene stresses the Duke's ancestry of Stuart, suggesting that Kate may be related to her ex-boyfriend.

The soundtrack to Kate & Leopold was released on December 25, 2001.

Kate & Leopold received mixed reviews from critics, as the film holds a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 126 reviews with the consensus: "Though Hugh Jackman charms, Kate & Leopold is bland and predictable, and the time travel scenario lacks logic."[4] Metacritic gave film a score of 44 based on 27 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[5]

Hugh Jackman was nominated in 2001 for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Song for the song "Until...", written and performed by Sting. The same song was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.[6]

In the film, Leopold, a 30-year-old member of the British Royal Court, was pulled from his own time, 28 April 1876, to the present day, i.e. circa 2001, when the film was completed. His name, title, and historical persona as Leopold, Duke of Albany is, however, only very loosely and fancifully based on Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the eighth child and youngest of the four sons of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who was the only real-life Leopold, Duke of Albany. In the film, Leopold is described as being His Grace the 3rd Duke of Albany, which is the style of a British non-royal duke, whereas the historical Leopold, Duke of Albany, was His Royal Highness Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert, a royal duke who was created (1st) Duke of Albany, etc., by his mother in 1881, titles he bore for the remainder of his life which was to last only a few years longer. Leopold died in 1884.

In the film, Leopold comments to Kate that he was 'born a duke', so his title is obviously an inherited one (at least in the film version of Leopold). As the film Leopold's father was still alive when Leopold was born, Leopold must have inherited his title from an earlier ancestor (as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the real-life Leopold, Duke of Albany was created a Duke by his mother).

The real Prince Leopold belonged to the British Royal Family, which, via Prince Leopold's father, H.R.H. Prince Albert, The Prince Consort, was a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the senior line of which, descended from Prince Leopold's eldest brother, Prince Albert Edward, later Edward VII, became the House of Windsor in 1917. Through Prince Leopold's mother, Queen Victoria, the family occupied the British Throne. Queen Victoria was the last British monarch born into the House of Hanover. The movie Leopold gives his full names as Leopold Alexis Elijah Walker Thomas Gareth Mountbatten. This not only diverges from the real Prince Leopold's baptismal and dynastic names, it is also an anachronism of over forty years' duration; for just as the British Royal Family's surname only became Windsor in 1917, so too, in reality, the fantasy Leopold's family name, Mountbatten, is a surname which did not exist in 1876.

Instead, the surname, Mountbatten, was only adopted on 14 July 1917 by a branch of the non-royal Battenberg family then living in Britain in lieu of the family's original German House or dynastic name of [von] Battenberg.

This occurred because of growing anti-German sentiment among the British public during World War I. By that point in the war, the unpopularity of all things German throughout the British Empire was such that both the reigning British Royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (itself a branch of the German Wettin dynasty), and the quasi-royal, House of Battenberg (a morganatic branch of the Grand Ducal House of Hesse and By Rhine), were thought to be endangered by their close historical family associations with the country of Britain's bitterest foe. They were convinced by their advisors to exchange their German dynastic or House names for English House and Family names (surnames) suggested to them by the College of Arms. By 1917, the British Cabinet and the King's private secretary thought that these name changes would identify their holders more clearly with Britain and her empire rather than their war enemy, thereby making them more palatable to the British public, staving off the danger that they would become the target of the public's ire, and thus safeguarding the survival the British Monarchy in what proved to be tumultuous times for European royalty.

Besides these liberties the film takes with dynastic history, there are several other obvious differences between the two Leopolds. The real life Prince Leopold lived from 1853 to 1884, dying when still only thirty, whereas the movie Leopold was rather older, being born no later than 1846, because he was already thirty when his uncle induced him to settle in New York City and look for a rich American bride sometime before April 1876. Opposed to this scenario is the fact that the historical Leopold never went to New York City. Instead, he stayed in Britain where, through arrangements made by his royal mother, he married a German princess, and sired two children, including a posthumous son, through whom he is a great-grandfather of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, that country's current monarch.

While the historical Leopold was a patron of the arts, and noted by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, for his high aims and thoughtful intelligence, he was not an inventor. In the film, however, Leopold has many inventive dreams.

Leopold names the elevator company after his valet Otis; however, the real Elisha Otis, who created the "safety elevator" and in 1853 founded the Otis Elevator Company, had quite a different personal history.

The film contains a number of anachronisms:

• Leopold and Stuart see each other at John A. Roebling's speech at the Brooklyn Bridge, but the famous engineer died in 1869, seven years before their meeting.
• When Leopold awakens to find himself in Stuart's apartment and demands to know where he's being held, he tells Stuart "As far as I'm concerned, you might be Jack the Ripper!" These Whitechapel murders to which Leopold refers, however, took place between 1888 and 1891, and so, much too late for Leopold to know of them.
• He says, "I can only assume I'm in a nightmare brought on by agita, or else I am dead." But the word agita ("heartburn") came into use in 1980–85.
• Leopold mentions having seen the premiere of The Pirates of Penzance "last month" (March 1876), though Penzance actually had its world premiere in New York City on 31 December 1879.
• When Kate's boss, J. J. Camden, tries to impress Kate with his knowledge of the opera La Bohème (by Giacomo Puccini), he is corrected by Leopold (concerning the name of the male lead and the language in which the opera is sung). This is an impossibility as the Puccini opera had its world premiere on 1 February 1896 in Turin, Italy, twenty years after Leopold's travel to the future. The opera has its origin in a novel published by Henry Murger in 1851. This means that while Leopold can know about the novel, he must remain incognizant of the opera, since it has not yet been composed. In the Italian version of the movie, the opera La Traviata is used instead in this dialogue. This makes the story plausible to the Italian public as La Traviata premiered in 1853.

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