The movie cements the idea of the Sensitive But Sexy Architect – the perfect mix of ‘artistic’ and ‘decently-paid’ career. #Where to watch sleepless in seattle tvWhere would we be without episodes of TV shows calling themselves ‘Sleepless in ’? (Among the more recent ones, ‘Sleepless in Ponyville’ from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.)ġ2. (My heart!) And right before he meets Annie properly, it’s explicitly established that he and Jonah are a family already, that he hasn’t screwed up, that they’re “doing okay” – that they’re not waiting to be rescued, basically. He may be closed-down in his romantic life, but this guy is not afraid to show affection to his kid. Despite grieving for his wife and suffering from insomnia, Sam is still a great father to Jonah. She may hurt him, but she’s never cruel to him.ġ0. The audience knows Annie has settled, but she really doesn’t see it until later. The allergic-to-everything Walter (Bill Pullman) is clearly a romantic false lead from the moment we meet him, but Annie genuinely adores him and finds him hilarious. “This man sells the greatest soup you have ever eaten and he is the meanest man in America.” Is that a reference to the Soup Nazi more than two years before Seinfeld get around to it? Why yes, yes it is.ĩ. David Hyde Pierce as Dennis, Annie’s brother, delivering lines about the subconscious and neuroses, along with “It rains nine months of the year in Seattle”, mere months before his first appearance as a neurotic (and Seattle-based) psychiatrist in Frasier, is utterly delightful.Ĩ. In rom-com land, a world where ‘finding The One’ is of paramount importance, hundreds of women think Sam is their ‘The One’.ħ. Almost as soon as he’s finished talking, there are women ringing up the radio station wanting his number – tying up phone lines across Seattle for two hours. It’s not just Annie who gets swoony-eyed over Sam’s story. So when Annie does get swoony-eyed over the idea that this guy needs someone in his life, it feels earned. When Annie and Sam speak in unison it reflects their cynicism towards Doctor Marcia (“Sure you do” in response to her “I don’t want to invade your privacy”). When Jonah rings up a radio agony aunt, ‘Doctor Marcia’ (“Her first name could be Doctor!” an unimpressed Sam says), declaring that his Christmas wish is for his dad to get a new wife, Annie is both sympathetic to the kid but rolling her eyes at Doctor Marcia’s smarmy reassurance that Jonah’s dad won’t be angry with him for putting him on the line (he is). The ‘meet cute’, orchestrated by Sam’s son Jonah (Ross Malinger) is undercut by a great deal of snark. When the women get weepy over Affair, it is played for comedy, and Annie’s best friend Becky (a typically down-to-earth Rosie O’Donnell) tells her that her problem is that she doesn’t want to be in love, she wants “to be in love in a movie”.ĥ. But it’s also a movie for people who enjoy mocking classic romantic movies. An Affair To Remember is both featured in and heavily discussed and referenced, right down to the meeting on the ‘top’ (or rather the observation deck) of the Empire State Building the opening song is ‘As Time Goes By’ from Casablanca.Ĥ. It’s a movie for people who love classic romantic movies. This is not about a quest for the perfect person – neither Sam (the aforementionedly-delicious Tom Hanks) nor Annie (Meg Ryan) are looking for love. Compare this to the ‘singleton’ opening monologue of Bridget Jones’s Diary. And let’s face it, the world of liking rom-coms in the first place is deeply uncool anyway.Ģ. Except Harry popularised the irritating idea of ‘high-maintenance’ women and Billy Crystal is nowhere near as lickable (so very much not a typo for ‘likeable’) as Tom Hanks – it may be a more authentic movie about love but it isn’t nearly as romantic. It is not ‘cool’ to have it as your favourite you’re supposed to prefer the earlier Nora Ephron/Meg Ryan outing When Harry Met Sally. My favourite and (subjectively, problematically) the best. 25 years after its first release, it still is. So when I say ‘ Sleepless In Seattle is the greatest romantic comedy of all time’ what I really mean is, it’s my favourite. It’s a flattening-out of something that should be layered.įavourites, on the other hand, are different. Can we ever really label a work of art as ‘the best’ of its kind? Surely to do so is reductionist, to suggest that experiencing something – a book, a movie, a painting, a play, a dance, a song – is a quantitative, rather than qualitative experience.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |