while you were sleeping
May. 28th, 2006 03:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fearlesstempThe urge to see While You Were Sleeping in its entirety was so compelling that I dragged myself to Target and bought the DVD. It was only six bucks! Score!
I watched the movie tonight in pieces because I wanted to make it last. At one point I found myself enjoying the movie so much that I jumped off the couch and announced to my cat, "There is not a moment in this movie that I don't love!"
Not precisely true. I do love it, though.
If I could change one thing about the movie, it would be the ending - I know the whole premise of the movie is ridiculous, but it's the ending that makes me roll my eyes. It reminds me of Bridget Jones's Diary II - both end with a sudden, random proposal of marriage, as if that's the automatic happy ending. I would much rather have seen Jack slide a ticket to Florence through the token-thingy, rather than an engagement ring. And then they could include the Obligatory Wedding Shot at the very end, occurring at an unspecified time, so it doesn't seem like these two people just met and got engaged and will probably end up divorced within a year.
That said! Oh, how I love this movie. Some things don't make much sense (would a family really be that full of holiday cheer when one of their own is lying comatose in a hospital?), but the movie works because the two romances in the movie are done so effectively. The first is the one between Lucy (Sandra Bullock's character) and Jack (Bill Pullman's character), and the second is between Lucy and the Callaghans. I'd say that the second is more important than the first, since the heart of the movie goes beyond romantic loneliness - Lucy's real pain comes not from her lack of a boyfriend, but from her lack of a family. The movie opens with Lucy talking about her childhood and what her father meant to her, and it's done in a sweet, funny way (I knew I would like the movie from the opening narration, when Lucy says, over a sepia-toned shot of a river, "There are two things I remember about my childhood...I just don't remember it being this orange"). When she later talks about her father getting ill and later dying, you really have a sense of what she's lost. A lot of that is because of Sandra Bullock, who I think is really great in the movie, with both the funny stuff and the sad stuff. I also like the movie a lot because it's got some nods to realism - Lucy works for the CTA taking tokens ("I sit in a booth like a veal!" she says at one point), and she dresses in drab, oversized clothes a lot of the time. She looks like someone who's used to disappearing into the background. I don't know, I think all of that gives the movie a little more depth than most romantic comedies have, in spite of its ridiculous premise and cheesy music and simplistic happy ending.
But this may just be another case of a person attributing undeserved depth and artistic merit to something they love from their adolescence. I fell in love with this movie when I was fifteen. I completely lack objectivity!
I watched the movie tonight in pieces because I wanted to make it last. At one point I found myself enjoying the movie so much that I jumped off the couch and announced to my cat, "There is not a moment in this movie that I don't love!"
Not precisely true. I do love it, though.
If I could change one thing about the movie, it would be the ending - I know the whole premise of the movie is ridiculous, but it's the ending that makes me roll my eyes. It reminds me of Bridget Jones's Diary II - both end with a sudden, random proposal of marriage, as if that's the automatic happy ending. I would much rather have seen Jack slide a ticket to Florence through the token-thingy, rather than an engagement ring. And then they could include the Obligatory Wedding Shot at the very end, occurring at an unspecified time, so it doesn't seem like these two people just met and got engaged and will probably end up divorced within a year.
That said! Oh, how I love this movie. Some things don't make much sense (would a family really be that full of holiday cheer when one of their own is lying comatose in a hospital?), but the movie works because the two romances in the movie are done so effectively. The first is the one between Lucy (Sandra Bullock's character) and Jack (Bill Pullman's character), and the second is between Lucy and the Callaghans. I'd say that the second is more important than the first, since the heart of the movie goes beyond romantic loneliness - Lucy's real pain comes not from her lack of a boyfriend, but from her lack of a family. The movie opens with Lucy talking about her childhood and what her father meant to her, and it's done in a sweet, funny way (I knew I would like the movie from the opening narration, when Lucy says, over a sepia-toned shot of a river, "There are two things I remember about my childhood...I just don't remember it being this orange"). When she later talks about her father getting ill and later dying, you really have a sense of what she's lost. A lot of that is because of Sandra Bullock, who I think is really great in the movie, with both the funny stuff and the sad stuff. I also like the movie a lot because it's got some nods to realism - Lucy works for the CTA taking tokens ("I sit in a booth like a veal!" she says at one point), and she dresses in drab, oversized clothes a lot of the time. She looks like someone who's used to disappearing into the background. I don't know, I think all of that gives the movie a little more depth than most romantic comedies have, in spite of its ridiculous premise and cheesy music and simplistic happy ending.
But this may just be another case of a person attributing undeserved depth and artistic merit to something they love from their adolescence. I fell in love with this movie when I was fifteen. I completely lack objectivity!
