What if someone you never met, someone you never saw, someone you never knew was the only someone for you?
1993-06-24
$21.0M
105 min
After the death of his mother, a young boy calls a radio station in an attempt to set his father up on a date. Talking about his father’s loneliness soon leads to a meeting with a young female journalist, who has flown to Seattle to write a story about the boy and his father.
Effective, functional and elegant, it has a script that I didn't like very much, and it has aged a little badly, but it remains an endearing film.
This is surely one of the most famous romantic comedies that came out during the 90's, and one of the films that helped to popularize Tom Hanks, showing the world that he could be a serious actor and do more interesting things besides comedy. The film begins with a man and his young son moving to Seattle to deal with a mourning process. There, the child begins to pressure his father to find a girlfriend, to the point of calling a radio program where the father tells his story, touching a young journalist from Baltimore who is about to marry a man she doesn't love.
The script relies heavily on Platonism: the two main characters do not know each other, and only the radio broadcast and the exchange of letters truly connects them. Neither has any real reason to look for the other (Hanks' character sees physical distance as an obstacle, and Ryan's character is already committed). In the end, it is the tenacity and stubbornness of a child that leads them to find each other. Based purely on instinct, which is an illogical and irrational argument for an adult to make his decisions. For that reason, and despite recognizing the film's qualities, I didn't particularly appreciate it. I see and understand the attempt to create a contemporary romantic fable here, but fables don't really seem to work these days. For me, this one didn't work.
The film's great strength is in the excellent performances of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The two are still quite young, trying to take advantage of the opportunity to achieve higher flights in more profitable and attractive projects for their careers. Hanks had mostly done comedy up until this point, and was determined to showcase his abilities in other projects. There is no doubt that he knew how to do it and show a deeper, more sensitive and emotional side that was not evident in his work so far. Ryan was also very competent in her role. Ross Malinger was also pretty good.
The film is not a great visual spectacle. It's a 90's movie that hasn't aged well and doesn't put much effort into the visuals. Proof of this are the graphics on that US map, which look like an arcade game. The cinematography is dull, and the colors washed out, but that was commonplace and routine in films of this era, and I take that reasonably well. The film tries to compensate us with excellent scenery and cityscapes of Seattle and New York, which is always effective, and with an excellent ending on top of the Empire State Building. The soundtrack makes a smart bet on songs by Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, Celine Dion, Carly Simon, Roy Rogers and others. Most of the songs are well known and popular.
I can't say I had a fun time with <em>'Sleepless in Seattle'</em>.
Post-watching, I was unsure how I felt about it. The whole set-up and how the story is portrayed is weird, the fact that the two characters in what supposed to be a romcom don't even properly meet until the final act is an odd choice, like don't get me wrong I can see it working but here it didn't for me... especially with one side giving stalker vibes, which adds to the weirdness.
I also wasn't convinced by the two leads, in both their performances and in their suitability - obviously the latter is hampered by the fact we barely seem them together so they cannot show any chemistry. Tom Hanks is the standout but only just, Meg Ryan tries though her character is just a bit mundane; and is in my opinion better suited to Bill Pullman's Walter, even though the film attempts to show us the opposite. No-one else onscreen sticks out, though credit to youngster Ross Malinger.
It's a nae from me, both Hanks and Ryan have thankfully done much better.
