Reeve plays Richard Collier, a playwright who becomes obsessed with a photograph of a young woman at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

Through self-hypnosis, he manifests himself back in time to the year 1912 to find love with actress Elise McKenna (portrayed by Seymour).

He comes into conflict with Elise's manager, William Fawcett Robinson (portrayed by Plummer), who fears that romance will derail her career, and attempts to stop him.

Among Elise's personal effects is a book on time travel written by his old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney.

The attempt fails because he lacks real conviction, but after finding a hotel guest book from 1912 containing his signature, he realizes that he will succeed.

Richard attends Elise's play where she recites an impromptu romantic monologue while making eye contact with him.

When Richard declares his intention to stand by Elise for the rest of her life, Robinson has him bound and locked inside the stables.

Although the film was well received during its previews,[citation needed] it was derided by critics upon release and underperformed at the box office.

In a TCM interview, Jane Seymour stated: "Well, what happened is we finished the movie and we weren't allowed to publicize it.

The producers had been considering a score based on the 18th variation of Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini," which is used in the film several times.

It was cable television the following spring where the film garnered a huge fan audience and interest in the music was tremendous.

Like most soundtracks of the time, the album was a series of re-recordings with highlights of the score recorded to fit onto two sides of an LP.

On July 13, 2021, a limited edition album was released by La-La Land Records with an expanded presentation of Barry's music.

Despite reviews calling the film "horrible" and a "superficial tear jerker", the International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts (I.N.S.I.T.E.

It was screened exclusively at the Palace Theatre [zh] in Causeway Bay, the most luxurious cinema in Hong Kong at that time, starting from September 12, 1981.

Due to its excellent reputation and box office, it continued to be screened at the Palace Theatre until April 22, 1982, with a total of 223 days.

This set the record for the longest continuous screening of a film in Hong Kong at that time, and it also kept the theatre itself full for three consecutive months.

[22] Due to the popularity of the film, Hong Kong singer Adam Cheng recorded a Cantopop cover version (如在夢中; lit.

"Like in a Dream") that was adapted from the theme music of the film in 1982, and the song was included in Cheng's album "Brothers Four [zh]".