If you’ve been reading along, you might recall that last year, I absolutely fell in love with “When Harry Met Sally”. I adored how effortlessly Nora Ephron’s script stitched together two friends on a pathway to free-range, 100% USDA-organic love. So you would imagine how excited I was to make Ephron’s next screenplay, and second directorial outing, this year’s Valentine’s Day film. Sadly, this film will not get a second date.
“Sleepless in Seattle” is a story about father Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) who loses his wife and moves to Seattle to grieve/hit reset on life. After some time, his son calls into a national, Dr. Laura-esque radio show wishing to find his dad a new wife. On the other side of the country in Baltimore, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) hears Sam speak about his wife and is heartbroken—but strangely attracted? Cue unlikely event after unlikely event, from Annie (who is engaged BTW) flying to Seattle to just see if just maybe Sam matches the Sam in her fantasy to Sam’s 8 year old son Jonah booking his own plane ticket to look for Annie in New York. Barf!
If the formula of “When Harry Met Sally” was to immediately introduce our characters and let love grow over the full film runtime, this film took the opposite approach. This is a romantic comedy in which our main characters don’t share a scene until 2/3 the way through, don’t speak until 4/5 the way in, and don’t touch until over 11/12 of the way into the film’s runtime. Seriously. I get trying to be different than your last outing, but this film effectively neuters what made "WHMS" so real and enticing. Throw in the five or six unbelievable plot points required to stitch this story together and you have me lost.
That’s not to say the film was a waste, it was just unconvincing; it felt like it was avoiding the “obvious” and instead skewed “unbelievable”. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are still charming “AF” and Hanks’ scenes with fellow buddy/bro Rob Reiner were a film highlight for me. Ephron’s writing shines when people are together, talking to one another and we got see this numerous times, just not with our two principals. This film allowed me to laugh, and hope, and ponder—do just about everything but fall in love.