Sleepless in Seattle Review

Has it really been 15 years since this movie came out? Because it seems like it’s been longer. I don’t mean that in a bad way; I mean it endearingly, as though this film has been a classic since the day it came out. I had forgotten the majority of the plot since the first and only other time I ever saw it, and that could be due to the fact that it is horribly contrived, full of one coincidence after another. But it’s difficult to get analytical over a movie filled with so much hope.

Tom Hanks plays Sam Baldwin, a recent widower left with a very young son when his wife dies of cancer. His idea of coping is moving from sunny Chicago to dreary Seattle. Meg Ryan plays Annie, a news reporter from Baltimore who happens to hear Baldwin’s sob story on the radio one night when the boy, Jonah, calls into a talk show to discuss his concern for his father. Annie seems to fall for Sam almost immediately - along with thousands of other women across the country who heard the broadcast. Annie has a bigger barrier to reaching Sam than just distance, though - she’s recently gotten engaged to boyfriend Walter (Bill Pullman). Amazingly enough, this doesn’t hinder her semi-crazy attempts to reach Sam.

The film was directed by Nora Ephron and co-written with sister Delia Ephron. The women certainly know how to touch the hearts of their audiences, not only with Sleepless in Seattle but the prior When Harry Met Sally and the later You’ve Got Mail. Coincidence - or destiny, as some like to call it - is not uncommon in their films. This could be a well-planned design to get us thinking about the possible coincidences in our own lives that we’ve missed, which are touched on in a special featurette to this DVD. How many times might we have seen our current love before we actually saw them? How many chances were missed because we weren’t paying attention? Well, it’s kind of nice to know that there might be someone out there specifically made for me, and that I’ll be given multiple chances to connect with them.

On the other hand, when looked at objectively, Annie’s behavior throughout the film is fairly psychotic and creepy. As she states herself, she’s writing letters to and flying across the country to see a man she’s never met, but heard on the radio. I mean, at least he made it clear on the radio that he was single and lonely, so it’s not like she was obsessed with someone who may or may not have a life. But those things don’t happen in real life, do they? Should they? Does destiny really need that much help to work things out?

Still, the movie warms your heart and builds some tears. Hanks and Ryan work wonderfully onscreen together, whether or not they’re in the same scenes for most of it. It may cause you to question your own relationships, as Annie became worried when she realized she’d never felt the “magic” that her mom felt for her dad, or that Sam had felt for his deceased wife. At the same time, it gives excitement to love, to think that it really is something special and not just something we all end up doing eventually.

The DVD features are nothing spectacular, and that includes the painful music video for “When I Fall in Love” by Celine Dion and Clive Griffin. The featurette is a poorly organized jumble of interviews, but there are a few key ideas worth listening to throughout.

If nothing else, this movie will entice you to rent An Affair to Remember, just to see what all the fuss is about. It’s certainly going in my Netflix queue.

You like? You’ll like: The Notebook; Happy Accidents; While You Were Sleeping

Directed by: Nora Ephron
DVD Release: October 7th, 2003
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Bill Pullman, Rosie O’Donnell, Ross Malinger
Runtime: 105 minutes

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