Sleepless In Seattle

SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

Director : Nora Ephron

Year : 1993

Genre : Romantic Comedy

Rating : ***

 

Once again, Valentine's Day has arrived with as much passion and heart as every other manufactured event, a festival that is purely designed to burn holes in our already scorched pockets and make the lonely and depressed feel that little bit more lonely and depressed. However, while I may be cynical about the sentiments and the motivations of those who vend the tacky plastic hearts and poorly stuffed teddy bears that are currently adorning all card shop windows, February 14th provides us film lovers with a fantastic opportunity to watch some of the most soppy and vomit inducingly saccharine movies ever made. I may be a die hard horror fan but I must admit there is nothing like settling down with a nice hot of cup of hot chocolate and the one you love to watch a bunch of people who really shouldn't be together come together in the most convoluted and far fetched ways possible. And crowning this tower of chocolate, roses and badly stitched plush animals is Nora Ephron's 1993 romantic classic 'Sleepless In Seattle'. 

Tom Hanks plays Sam, a lonely and depressed widower who is mourning the loss of his wife. Living alone with his young son Jonah, Sam spends his hours blithely working away and ignoring the world that is moving on and forgetting the love of his life. However all of that changes on Christmas Eve night when out of desperation, Jonah calls a radio agony aunt to ask for advice about how to cheer his father up. After speaking to the lady himself and his broadcast breaks the hearts of thousands of women listeners across the country, Sam finds himself deluged in letters and cards from those asking him to dinner. 

One of these ladies is Annie played by Meg Ryan, a Baltimore reporter who has just become engaged to the hyper allergic and mysophobic Walter played by Bill Pullman. While she is happy with the paranoid man, she does feel that there is something missing from their relationship and after watching the Cary Grant classic 'An Affair To Remember', Annie goes on a search for true romance. What ensues is a cross country voyage to meet Sam and try to discover what true love really is.

Best known for her romantic comedy classics such as 'When Harry Met Sally' and 'You've Got Mail', the late Nora Ephron was the perfect choice to direct this tale of destiny and desire. While the direction may not be particularly outstanding and some of the dialogue now sounds very dated indeed, the emotion and the dedication to both the filmmaking and the performances is still felt when watching 'Sleepless In Seattle' today. Based on a story by Jeff Arch, there are times when the convoluted plot and contrived narrative twists seem almost too nice and sweet for their own good but despite my better judgement, I found myself invested in both Meg Ryan's search for love and Tom Hank's search for happiness after unfathomable sorrow.

Tom Hanks is his usual fantastic self and he brings a lot of emotion and pathos to the role of Sam Baldwin, a man who has given up on happiness and is content to just live alone with his son. In the same year, Hanks would go on to play Andrew Beckett in Jonathan Demme's masterpiece 'Philadelphia' for which he would win an Oscar so 1993 was a pretty damn good year for him, but it was his performance in 'Sleepless In Seattle' that earned him a reputation as a true Hollywood star, rather than as a serious actor who could take on very heavy material that suited much more towards the critical and art house circuit. Unfortunately, Sam's sadness isn't explored enough in the film for me and this does make his character seem somewhat two dimensional. We never understand how he is dealing with his emotions and what it is doing him both physically and psychologically. Yes, we get a number of scenes of him sitting down quietly contemplating and there is also a fantastically staged scene where Hanks dreams about his now deceased partner, but unlike other characters such as Captain Phillips, Forrest Gump or Andrew Beckett, we never get a full rainbow of emotions or explanations about how he is trying to move on with his life. I'm not saying that his portrayal is at all bad, after all Tom Hanks is one of, if not the best actor working in the movies today but I would have liked a bit more development and a little less inward turmoil to really make me empathise and gravitate towards his character. On the other hand, the relationship between him and his son Jonah is explored very well indeed and perfectly captures the utter grief and fear that is felt by both a parent and a child when a mother or father dies.

Meg Ryan on the other hand is given most of the screen time and this gives Ephron a chance to really explore every single facet of her character. For this reason, she is to me one of the most human and relatable characters in the entire romantic comedy genre, even if the situations she is put in certainly push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief. With her beautiful blonde hair and effervescent blue eyes, Ryan jumps off the screen and becomes a perfect embodiment of every woman's romantic fantasies and I think this is why 'Sleepless In Seattle' has become such a favourite over the years. It is not because the story itself is remarkable or revolutionary as it rips off a number of key moments from 'An Affair To Remember' (if not in post modern homage way) but it's because its central characters are hugely identifiable, making a change to the usually cookie cutter, wide eyed simpleton's who mope around for an hour and a half until their true loves embrace them in the rain. Don't get me wrong, I love the relationship between Hanks and his son and I enjoy the friendship between Ryan and Pullman but at the end of the day, 'Sleepless In Seattle' works because it treats it's audience like emotive and empathetic people, rather than dumb spectators who just absorb self centred rubbish while they stuff their faces with popcorn and other heavily salted snacks.

Making nearly $230m at the box office, 'Sleepless In Seattle' would go on to become the 5th highest grossing film of 1993, would earn two Academy Award nominations for Best Song  and Best Original Screenplay and in 2010 would be named the 10th best romantic movie by the American Film Institute.There is a reason why 'Sleepless In Seattle' is so loved after 21 years and this Valentine's Day provides a great excuse to see why for yourself. It may not be my personal favourite romantic comedy but compared to the more recent romantic films that focus more on gross out gags and gratuitous swearing than traditional heart and character then you could do so much worse this February 14th.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!  bah humbug....