Sleepless In Seattle (The Movie) - Essay Example

Sleepless in Seattle is a romantic comedy drama directed by Nora Ephron with Tom Hank and Meg Ryan playing the main characters. The film was met withquite opposite attitudes: some critics entirely poo-pooed the film, others praised it to heaven. However, the film received an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay (written by Nora Ephron in cooperation with Jeff Arch, David S. Ward and Delia Ephron) and continues being one of the romantic comedies people like to watch. The plot is simple and the end is predictable.

Sam Baldwin (Hanks) is an architect from Chicago, whose wife dies of cancer. She was his perfect match. He knew it since he touched her hand for the first time. It was like magic, he says. He doesn’t believe it may happen twice in life. He decides to begin the life from a clean page and leaves for Seattle, where he buys a boat house. He’s got a wonderful 8-year-old son Jonah, who worries about him. On Christmas Eve Jonah calls the radio and speaks to Dr. Marcia about his father, who doesn’t sleep and denies having any dates.

Jonah thinks his father needs a wife. Dr. Marcia feels that Sam is seriously depressed and invites him to communication. When Jonah goads his father to the phone, Sam, first reluctantly, speaks about his wife. He tells about her and their relationships in simple words that touch all the female hearts. He speaks of the magic every woman dreams of. As a result, he gets about 2,000 letters with proposals from women living all over the USA. He even agrees to date with one of them, hyena-like laughing Victoria.

Annie Reed (Ryan) is a newspaper feature writer, who loves to watch romantic old movies and is going to marry a man, offering her stability and certainty. Bill Pullman, playing her fiancé, what Hollywood calls "the Bellamy role" (“decent but dull suitors always nudged aside so that hero and heroine could go off together”) is a perfect nuisance, dull and boring. She persuades herself that there is no romantic in the world and we should live using our common sense. When she hears Sam’s story, something clicks in her head.

She thinks of him, and at last writes a letter, offering to meet in New York at the Empire State building, as it was planned by the characters of the old movie she likes best of all. An Affair to Remember, which inspired Ephron and makes all the females in the film cry, had a tragic end, while Sleepless in Seattle doesn’t leave any doubt as to the happy end. Besides, Annie goes to Seattle to look at Sam and really likes him. Moreover, Sam also gets very interested in a beautiful blond stranger, whom he sees first at the airport and then near his house on the other side of the road.

While the grown-ups are constantly hesitating as to whether to meet or not, little Jonah knows for sure that he wants Annie as his new mother. So everything ends just as we thought: the perfect couple meets at the very last moment, and as they join their hands, we realize that it is the magic they both have dreamt of (Perry 2000; Hinson 1993). The characters of Nora Ephron are “brittle, smart, self-absorbed, irresistible neurotic people”, believes Hal Hinson (1993), - “they are also endowed with a sense of personal theatricality.

Her people are hopeless romantics. Theyve seen so many films and projected themselves into so many saloon ballads that they cant help casting themselves as the stars of their own private movies - complete with a soundtrack of their favorite songs, some jokes, and maybe even a few recipes”. Be it not for the actors, the film would certainly be an entire failure. First of all, the success was guaranteed by Meg Ryan with her “wild-pony beauty” and “sexy gawkiness”. At the same time Hinson thinks that as Annie “she comes across as a much more mature, much more solid presence than she did earlier in her career” (Hinson 1993).

Andre Soares (2004) fairly remarks that Ryan’s character is an underwritten role, while “Hanks, who had been worried during production that his "sensitive," grieving widower would come across as a wimp, has the advantage of getting some of the best sardonic lines in the film”. As a result he “gives one of his best performances, full of nuance and tenderness” (Hicks 1993). The rest of the cast is also first-rate, with Rosie ODonnell as Ryans boss and young Malinger as Jonah. There is one scene that seems to be most hilarious not only to me but also to critics: with Rita Wilson (Hanks real-life wife) trying in vein to explain why women love An Affair to Remember to two men (Hicks 1993).

As a result, the film represents, as Hicks puts it, “the most intelligent combination of humor, heart, romance and comedy to show up on the big screen in some time”. References:Hicks, Chris (1993). Sleepless in Seattle. Desert News Movie critic. Reviewed June 25, 1993. Desert News Publishing Co. Retrieved September 2, 2007 from www.deseretmorningnews.com/movies/view/1,1257,1678,00.html - 17kHinson, Hal (1993). Sleepless in Seattle’ (PG). Washington Post, June 25, 1993. Retrieved September 2, 2007 from http://www.

washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/sleeplessinseattlepg13brown_a0adf1.htmPerry, George (2000). Sleepless in Seattle (1993). BBC Film reviews. Updated December 18, 2000. Retrieved September 2, 2007 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/12/18/sleepless_in_seattle_1993_review.shtmlSoares, Andre (2004). Sleepless in Seattle by Nora Ephron. Alternative Film Guide. October 22, 2004. Retrieved September 2, 2007 from http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-reviews/sleepless-in-seattle-tom-hanks-meg-ryan/