Sleepless in seatle review3/31/2023 ![]() On the downside, the supporting players, generally a welcome relief from the maudlinness of most movie romances, do not offer much help in this one.Īs the Other Man, Bill Pullman overdoes his character’s allergy crises, while future talk-show hostess Rosie O’Donnell is no more than adequate as a drier, more staid Una Merkel type. Tom Hanks, who had been worried during production that his “sensitive,” grieving widower would come across as an insufferable wimp, has the advantage of getting (or creating, since the actor also ad-libbed) some of the best sardonic lines in the film. Neither Tom Hanks nor Meg Ryan brings much depth to their characterizations – Ryan, in particular, suffers because Annie is such an underwritten role (“a Republican who had never had an orgasm” was Ephron’s description of Ryan’s character motivation) – but both of them are personable, eminently watchable actors. What saves Sleepless in Seattle from total disaster is the sheer likability of its two leads. Tom Hanks & Meg Ryan can’t rescue sappy romance Soon to become a back-to-back Best Actor Oscar winner ( Philadelphia, 1993 Forrest Gump, 1994), Hanks succeeds in delivering an engaging performance in what is otherwise a bottomless ocean of mush. ![]() Sleepless in Seattle movie with Tom Hanks. But realistically speaking, no one in their right mind could believe from the get-go that anything would prevent Baltimore’s Annie from having a tête à tête with Seattle’s Sleepless. Topographical details aside, when Sleepless in Seattle finally reaches its romantic climax, this viewer was praying for a meteor hit that would send Annie directly to heaven itself. A car interferes with Kerr’s dash to “the closest place to heaven on Earth” – even though that would actually have been the top of Mt. Of course, the promised meeting between Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr never takes place in the 1957 drama. ‘The closest place to heaven on Earth’ not close enoughĪs an homage to An Affair to Remember, Nora Ephron and her fellow co-writers have our hero and heroine brought together by fate – here in the form of your usual movie brat – at the top of the Empire State Building. After reading it, Jonah decides that Annie will be his next Mom. – fall in love with Sam’s voice and his longing for “magic.”Ī few days later, her best friend, Becky (Rosie O’Donnell), mails a letter Annie had written to Sam. Annie – along with thousands of other women across the U.S. On the other side of the United States, Baltimore denizen Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) is on her way to meet her fiancé, Walter (Bill Pullman), when she accidentally tunes into that station. Egged on by the boy, Sam (code name: “Sleepless in Seattle”) ends up discussing his feelings of loss and loneliness on national radio. Worried about his listless father, Jonah contacts a call-in radio program. Sleepless in Seattle begins as recently widowed architect Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) moves with his 8-year-old son Jonah (Ross Malinger) from Chicago to Seattle so as to forget his late wife. Sully (2016) Movie Review: Tom Hanks Capably Embodies Clint Eastwood’s American Hero Fetish In addition to Sleepless in Seattle, there have also been When Harry Met Sally… and You’ve Got Mail not coincidentally, all three starring Meg Ryan. Nora Ephron has written numerous hard-hitting essays a good screenplay about a strong-willed woman, Silkwood and a damning indictment of former husband and All the President’s Men coauthor Carl Bernstein, Heartburn, a novel later turned into a Mike Nichols movie starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.īut apparently hidden under Ephron’s tough-as-nails surface lay a sentimentalist screaming to get out. No wonder Sleepless in Seattle became a box office smash upon its release. If you repeat it often enough…įollowing in the footsteps of Claude Lelouch’s 1974 hit And Now My Love, and with pivotal touches borrowed from Leo McCarey’s 1957 romance classic An Affair to Remember (itself a remake of McCarey’s own 1939 Love Affair), Sleepless in Seattle is a tale of romantic yearning and fateful encounters – but one in which human feelings and emotions are replaced by audience-friendly mawkishness and near-lethal doses of saccharine. ![]() Ward (in addition to an uncredited Delia Ephron) were apparently trying to create screen magic through the power of suggestion. At the other extreme, the word “magic” seems to crop up every other minute in director/co-screenwriter Nora Ephron’s 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle.Įphron and fellow Oscar-nominated screenwriters Jeff Arch and David S. ![]() Magic is just about everywhere in that lyrical tale about love, longing, and fate. In Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Red, the last installment in his “Three Colors” trilogy, the word “magic” is never bandied about. ![]()
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