SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE – Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Direction: Nora Ephron
Screenplay: Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch, and Delia Ephron (uncredited), from an original story by Jeff Arch
Cast: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rosie O’Donnell, Gaby Hoffman, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson, David Hyde Pierce, Rob Reiner
In Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Red, the last installment of his "Three Colors" trilogy, the word "magic" is never bandied about. No need to. Magic is just about everywhere in that lyrical tale about love and fate. In Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, which received an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay, the word "magic" seems to crop up every other minute. Ephron and fellow screenwriters Jeff Arch, David S. Ward, and (an uncredited) Delia Ephron were apparently trying to create screen magic through self-hypnosis. If you say it often enough…
Following in the steps of Claude Lelouch’s 1974 And Now My Love, with added touches taken from Leo McCarey’s 1957 romance classic An Affair to Remember (itself a remake of McCarey’s own 1939 Love Affair), co-scenarist-director Nora Ephron’s box-office smash Sleepless in Seattle is a tale of romantic yearning in which real feelings and emotions are replaced by mannered cutesiness and near-lethal doses of saccharine.
Nora Ephron has written numerous hard-hitting essays; one good screenplay about a strong woman, Silkwood; and a damning indictment of former husband Carl Bernstein, Heartburn, a novel that in 1986 was turned into a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Apparently, however, hidden under Ephron’s tough-as-nails surface lies a sentimentalist screaming to get out.
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. Worried about his father, Jonah contacts a call-in radio program. Egged on by Jonah, Sam (code name: Sleepless in Seattle) ends up discussing his feelings of loss and loneliness on national radio.
At the other end of the United States, in Baltimore, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) is on her way to meet her fiancé, Walter (Bill Pullman), when she accidentally tunes into that station. Annie — along with thousands of other women across the U.S. — fall in love with Sam’s voice and his longing for "magic." A few days later, her best friend, Becky (Rosie O’Donnell), mails a letter Annie had written to Sam. When Jonah reads Annie’s letter, he decides that Annie will be his next mom.
Inspired by An Affair to Remember, Ephron and her fellow co-writers have our hero and heroine brought together by fate — in the form of your typical movie brat — at the top of the Empire State Building. In An Affair to Remember, the meeting actually never takes place — a car interferes with Deborah Kerr’s dash to "the closest place to heaven on Earth." At the climax of Sleepless in Seattle, I was ardently hoping for a meteor hit that would send Annie directly to heaven itself, 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.
What saves Sleepless in Seattle from total disaster is the sheer likableness of its two leads. 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 have that indefinable quality that turns mere actors into movie stars. (Admittedly, my idea of "movie star" may not be yours; and vice versa.) Hanks, who had been worried during production that his "sensitive," grieving widower would come across as a wimp, has the advantage of getting (or creating, since the actor also ad-libbed) some of the best sardonic lines in the film.
On the downside, the supporting players, generally a welcome relief from the overall mawkishness of movie romances, do not offer much help in this one. As the other man, Bill Pullman overdoes his allergy-suffering bit. After a couple of minutes, I was the one sneezing and gasping for air each time Pullman’s Walter showed up on-screen. Future talk-show hostess Rosie O’Donnell is no more than adequate as a drier, more staid Una Merkel type, but I must give O’Donnell credit for the best line delivery in the film. "I love that dream," she matter-of-factly tells Annie — referring to those dreams in which the dreamer finds herself walking naked in public places.
Watching Sleepless in Seattle, we learn that men and women have different sensibilities (women cry while watching An Affair to Remember; men don’t cry, period); that an inarticulate, faux-emotional chat on a call-in radio program may lead to unexpected romance with a cute blonde from Baltimore; and that a person can experience magical & ever-lasting romantic love more than once.
Thus, when Sleepless and Annie go meet their maker at the top of heaven’s equivalent to the Empire State Building, I expect them to be joined by Sleepless’ first wife for an eternal three-way bliss. Now, that is a movie I’d like to watch.
2 Academy Award Nominations
Best Original Screenplay: Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch
Best Original Song: "A Wink and a Smile," by Marc Shaiman (music); Ramsey McLean (lyrics)
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Tags: An Affair to Remember, Delia Ephron, Film Reviews, Meg Ryan, Nora Ephron, Oscar 1993, Oscar Movies, Romantic Movies, Rosie O'Donnell, Sleepless in Seattle, Tom Hanks
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