★★★½ (out of 5) Recommended for: Fans of While You Were Sleeping , The Lake House , or anyone who misses mid-budget rom-coms with actual stars.

Hugh Jackman plays Leopold, a 19th-century Duke who accidentally follows a time-traveling scientist (Liev Schreiber) into 21st-century New York. Meg Ryan is Kate, a cynical market researcher who finds Leopold insufferably polite at first—then unexpectedly irresistible.

Kate & Leopold doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel—but it doesn’t need to. Directed by James Mangold ( Walk the Line , Logan ), this early-2000s romantic comedy mixes time travel, fish-out-of-water humor, and old-fashioned courtship with just enough charm to make it work.