While You Were Sleeping

Rating:
Summary: One of my all time favorites!
Review: I have watched this movie a lot of times and thought I would finally review it. I'm happy to see other reviewers also feel the same way I do about this movie! This is one of the few movies that I repeatedly put into my dvd player for viewing. It is one of the best romantic comedy films ever made.

The story is about Lucy (Sandra Bullock), a lonely girl without family, who works in a tollbooth everyday with boredom. The only high point of her work is when she sees Peter Callahan, a man who walks by her booth everyday to catch the subway. She has not talked to him ever but hopes that one day that he too will fall in love with her. One day though, due to some circumstances, something happens to Peter and she saves Peter's life in the subway station and brings him to the hospital. Due to some misunderstandings, Peter's family think Lucy is his fiancée and accept her as part of her family, where she gets to meet Jack (Bill Pullman). Soon Lucy finds herself in a sticky position and has to decide as to who she really loves in the end.

You will never get tired of watching this movie over and over again. When you watch this film, you will laugh, cry, and feel good about yourself. Sandra Bullock did a great job of playing Lucy. The chemistry between her and Bill Pullman is wonderful throughout the movie. Also, the background music to the movie is really great! Randy Edelman composed a sweet soundtrack for this movie that adds perfectly to all the scenes of the movie. `While you were sleeping' is a film you can watch with anyone, whether it be your friends or your family, and everyone enjoys it!

Rating:
Summary: A Chick Flick that Guys can like too!
Review: For her work after "Speed" my brother began referring to Sandra Bullock as "Queen of the Chick Flicks", and I won't disagree, although some of her films work much better for members of both sexes than others. "While You Were Sleeping" is an entertaining film for Guys and Dolls, and it works in repeated viewings.

Sandra portrays Lucy Moderatz, who takes tolls on the L train in Chicago and from afar has an obsessive crush on the handsome, well-dressed Peter Callaghan, played by Peter Gallagher. The audience must willingly accept that someone as likable and attractive as Sandra Bullock is stuck in a dead-end job where she is lonely and works all the holidays because, after all, she doesn't have anyone to share them with. The movie doesn't give you much time to dwell on this because before you know it, Peter is getting mugged and knocked off Lucy's train station platform where he falls unconscious onto the path of a rapidly approaching train. Not surprisingly, Lucy jumps down and pulls the man of her dreams to safety. Lucy then follows the comatose Peter to the hospital where a nurse overhears Lucy in one of her daydreams say "this is the man I'm going to marry" - which naturally leads the nurse to think that Lucy and Peter are engaged when, in fact, the only words that have passed between them are when Peter paused to say "Merry Christmas" as he dropped his token into Lucy's toll booth.

Peter's wonderful family arrives and the misunderstanding of Lucy as Peter's fiancee is perpetuated. Lucy could have cleared up the whole misunderstanding from the first moments but:
1. Peter's family is wonderful and Lucy is lonely.
2. Peter's grandmother has a "heart condition" and Lucy fears that telling the truth may send Grandma over the edge. (The screenwriters were clearly searching for a reason for Lucy to not just fess up....)
3. Since Lucy has been fantasizing about Peter for awhile it's not that difficult for her to pretend to be his fiancee.

I often read Roger Ebert in reviews where he says it's not as important *what* the movie is about as *how* the movie is about that thing.

This movie would be doomed to failure if it were only about some pathetic toll-taker who pretends to be engaged to her dream-boat to his family while he's in a coma. But Lucy isn't pathetic - she's as likable and attractive as, well, Sandra Bullock, and Peter's family is full of charming, likable folks. Peter, as things would have it, isn't as charming as Lucy dreamt. Although he used to be in the family business of antique furniture, he went to law school and now barely keeps in touch with his family. He has a bitchy girlfriend who is in Europe leaving calls on his answering machine while he is in a coma - one of the calls tells him "yes, I'll marry you".

Again - it's not difficult to guess where much of this is going. Bill Pullman plays Peter's charming, easy-going brother, Jack, who has stayed close to the family, running Dad's business. (There is an extremely well-done low-key scene close to the end where Jack tells Dad, played by Peter Boyle, that he wants to MAKE furniture instead of just dealing it - which will mean getting out of the family business. The scene has both a ring of authenticity, not yielding to any histrionic cliches, and at the same time maintaining the warm feelings that you've built up for both of these characters by this portion of the movie. These kinds of scenes *make* this movie.)

Jack Warden gets special kudos from me as Peter's godfather, Saul, who loves his godson, but also comes to love Lucy as well. Michael Rispoli steals a few scenes as "Joe, Jr." the son of Lucy's landlord. In the early scenes Joe comes across as a shorter, heavier Andrew Dice Clay wannabe. But by the end even Joe has become someone deserving our admiration. This is the kind of movie where you want nice things to happen to the characters - and the movie goes about it's business in a very satisfying way.