![]() ![]() The soundtrack may be at times surprising (Jimmy Durante singing As Time Goes By?), and at times too literal for its own good (do we really need In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning to tell us what we already know?), but Ryan looks good enough to eat, Hanks women will find hard to resist, and the kid is one of the most appealing on screen for years. Conspiring to keep the star-crossed lovers apart for the majority of the film, Ephron's script is often uproariously funny (Hanks and buddy extolling the merits of The Dirty Dozen is especially memorable), while there is able support from O'Donnell and Rob Reiner as Annie's and Sam's best buddies respectively. Very much in the vein of When Harry Met Sally, this cannily uses clips from the 1957 Cary Grant vehicle An Affair To Remember to delightfully screwball effect, even going so far as to have Jonah arrange a meeting between Hanks and Ryan atop the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day. Plucking from the burgeoning pile a letter purporting to be from Annie, who Jonah is convinced is the one, he hatches a scheme to introduce them, despite their living 3,000 miles apart. These include lovelorn Baltimore journo Annie Reed (Ryan) who finds herself becoming increasingly obsessed by his description of his first meeting with his wife as "magic" and fears that if she marries her sensible but sterile fiance Walter (Pullman) she will settle for "satisfactory" rather than "magical".Īs the offers of marriage flood in for "Sleepless", Jonah (Ross Malinger) takes it upon himself to play matchmaker and find himself a mother, and his dad a new wife from the thousands of applicants. When recently widowed architect Sam Baldwin (Hanks) is conned into taking part in a late night Christmas Eve phone-in radio talk show by his young son Jonah, his on-air "why-I-loved-my-wife" confession has heart-string tugging repercussions throughout the land as women all over America fall in love with the disembodied voice known only as "Sleepless in Seattle". Nora Ephron directed her own screenplay and the result is a magic romantic film like they used to do even in the high tech Nineties.A hugely enjoyable romantic comedy, directed by the writer of When Harry Met Sally, this attacks both funny bone and tear-ducts with equal success. Sleepless In Seattle got two Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Song. Rosie O'Donnell has a nice bit in this as well as Ryan's equally romantic minded friend who kind of quarterbacks Ryan's moves. Hanks and Ryan strike just the right note as the fated couple and Hanks has some great scenes with young Malenger. But if one is fated to be mated than those laws just don't apply. ![]() More cynical folks than myself would say that Ryan was stalking Hanks and there are laws against it. Good old reliable steady Bill, but Meg is hearing a different calling and taking her cues from that Leo McCarey classic, An Affair To Remember she goes in a nationwide hunt for Hanks. One of those touched hearts is Meg Ryan's who is ready to marry Bill Pullman who is playing what used to be called the Ralph Bellamy role. Hanks gets on the phone as well and his story touches female hearts across America and he's known by the moniker of Sleepless In Seattle. Hanks and Malinger move to Seattle and its from their new home in Seattle that young Master Malinger makes his fateful call. Tom Hanks is the recently widowed father of Malinger they've just finished burying his wife Carey Lowell and he thinks a change of scenery is in order to assuage his grief. But when young Ross Malinger calls a radio psychologist played in voice only by Caroline Aaron about his father it sets off an entire chain of events that make you believe in fate. If I had ever done this thing for either of my parents back in the day or something similar I shudder to think of the consequences. ![]() And this film takes up the proposition that some folks are fated to be mated. How could have you done a film like this in another time? Well romance is certainly eternal and if the way humans connect is different now, the point is they still connect. ![]() It's a film that is in part based on the high tech culture that the Nineties spawned with computers and nationwide talk radio. Sleepless In Seattle is truly a film for the Nineties. ![]()
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