If viewers hadn't kept their eyes peeled waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for one of Tom Hanks' hilarious comic scenes in "Sleepless in Seattle," they probably would have been sleeping in their seats.
And they wouldn't have missed much of the story. After sitting through the first few scenes, the entire audience could have dozed off and still guessed the rest of the movie.
Basically, the movie is the predictable "wife dies, husband grieves, son finds a new mom for dad (different than the one he finds for himself), son is right, man and woman fall in love" flick. It's light and cheerful, even when dealing with the tragic loss of a loved one.
The movie begins after Sam Baldwin, played by Hanks, loses his wife. Thus the audience never has a chance to get to know the woman and therefore never really appreciates what her death meant to the family she left behind.
To get away from the town where Sam claims he runs into memories of his departed wife around every corner (only one of which the viewers are shown), he picks up his son, Jonah, and heads to Seattle.
The rest of the movie takes place a year and a half later and, as the title suggests, Sam is still so upset over the loss that he can't sleep. Eager to help, Jonah telephones a radio call-in show in search of a cure for his father's depression.
The call touches the hearts of women across the nation who hear the show, including Annie, Meg Ryan's character. Jonah picks her letter from among the hundreds sent as the perfect match for his dad.
Annie flies all the way from Boston to Seattle to meet the man of her dreams, but winds up never speaking to him, only watches from afar as he and Jonah do the father-son thing. The two boat to the beach across from their house just to toss the football around and rub each other's heads a few times.
Despite Sam's repeated refusals to fly to New York to meet Annie on top of the Empire States Building on Valentine's Day as her letter cheezily requested, Jonah jets to the Big Apple himself and Sam's fatherly love forces him to follow.
The three wind up on the skyscraper together, and, with one look into each other's eyes, the audience knows they'll be together for the rest of their lives. Sam and Annie say no more than two words to each other.
Ask anyone leaving the theater to describe "Sleepless in Seattle" and you will undoubtedly hear "cute." That pretty much sums it up. Cute idea, cute dialogue, cute cast.
But, when you read that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are starring in a film, cute doesn't really leap to mind. You think funny, hilarious, rolling on the floor of the theater in fits of laughter. You think "Big," "Splash," "When Harry Met Sally," and this one just doesn't register at the same level on the humor scale.
The movie doesn't even give the two stars a chance to play off each other's lines to enhance the duo's comic potential. In fact, Ryan and Hanks are in no more than ten minutes of the entire movie together.
If the cast had been different and the expectations not as high, the audience might not have left feeling as though they were still missing something. But, as it was, "Sleepless in Seattle" will probably garner more grumbles than giggles.
