Day One Hundred and Eighteen - Sleepless in Seattle, "Hanks and Ryan are a Charm Explosion... but I was bored."

I won't lie, I love these two as actors... in pretty much any film they're in they exude so much affable charm that it's sometimes hard to watch. One of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is the cheesy You've Got Mail (a remake of the 1940 Jimmy Stewart picture) where they blindly fall in love over AOL.

Here in Sleepless, though, I found myself annoyed.

For one thing, the premise makes me tired. Architect Sam (Hanks) lost both his wife and the mother of his child far too early to cancer. Not coping well, his son calls a national therapy hotline (where's Doctor Fraiser Crane when we need him) because the boy thinks his dad needs a new wife... and their story goes across the airwaves and piques the interest of east coast writer Annie (Ryan) who is engaged to the perfect man (Bill Pullman) but feels no "magic" with him.

Written and directed by the late Nora Ephron (who also did You've Got Mail), it basically romanticizes a woman who stalks a man she's never met.

I mean, seriously, the some total of their interaction until the climax consists of a letter that Sam rightly dismisses and a shared look between the two across a sometimes busy, sometimes not street near Sam's houseboat. Honestly, I was expecting the soundtrack to start playing "Some Enchanted Evening" even though it was the middle of the afternoon.

I think what annoys me the most is how much it tries to sneak in references to An Affair to Remember. It feels like cheating when Annie is almost run over on the street and they repeat lines to each other. Perhaps the only thing that saved it from that schmaltz was the Dirty Dozen reference where Hanks and Victor Garber start bawling over that film to counterpoint Rita Wilson's (Hank's wife in real life) breakdown over An Affair.

Still, in spite of its weaknesses, Sleepless in Seattle features performances from both Hanks and Ryan that tug full force at the heart strings. There are moments when it's just them and the camera (always separated by distance) and you can just feel the aching loneliness that holds their characters in check.

That initial phone call where Sam is baring his heart and Annie is listening thousands of miles away in tears really gets me.

Switching gears, kudos to Ephron and Pullman for making an annoying character who you know won't get the girl in the end likeable and redeemable. It's ham-fisted and obvious, but I am so sick of romcoms where the other man/woman is a complete tool (as they did in You've Got Mail with Greg Kinnear and Parker Posey). Having that climax dinner where Annie tells her fiance that she can't marry him end amicably is oddly great.

I just wish they hadn't made him an allergy-ridden weakling.

...

Sleepless in Seattle isn't a great film.

I know it's sacrilege to say such, but it's driven too much by its silly premise and not enough by true character interaction.

I mean, seriously, the sum total of Sam and Annie's experience together consists of a look, a letter, and a meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. There's no relationship here... just "the magic." And that, alone, does not a good movie make for me.

It's cute and can jerk tears at moments, but its charms do not overcome its flaws. I'd say you should watch it at least once, but it shouldn't need more than that.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Forty-three - The Presidio, or "Mark Harmon's NCIS Training."

There weren't a lot of hard boiled mysteries in the 80's.

Instead, it was the decade of the funny/buddy cop movie. Be it Beverly Hills Cop or Running Scared or 48 Hours, most detective stories were about the laughs, usually brought by streetwise underdogs with hearts of gold and mouths that never quit.

Pretty much gone were the days of the stoic cop who talked little and loved hard. Dirty Harry and the hard boiled detective were on their way out.

Oddly enough, though, one or two films cropped up that still stuck to noir tendencies and followed a rather logical set of reveals. All of the evidence is there to be discovered, it's just a matter of the investigators finding it and making the connections.

The Presidio is one of them.

Now, everything I've just said is a little unfair to several films. Eddie Murphy did a pretty decent job in Beverly Hills Cop. To be honest, that first one was actually good in how it laid out its mystery. Not great, as it relied on laughs too much and his comical interactions with Judge Reinhold and John Ashton, but good. And I love the chemistry between Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines in Running Scared, even if the plot is mostly meh. I mean, they spend a good quarter of the movie on vacation... shooting a music video, for crying out loud.

Anyways, back to The Presidio.

Starring Sean Connery and Mark Harmon as a pair of policemen (one military, the other civillian) who have a history. Their antagonism is established right from the start. It certainly doesn't help that Connery's uber-hot daughter, played by Meg Ryan, starts instantly dating the brash detective her father abhors.

Despite these seriously cheesy cliches, The Presidio performs decently as a movie of the week. I don't think it would ever win any awards, but I could definitely see it as a rental compromise when you couldn't choose between Pretty Woman for her and Commando for him (or vice versa, as would've been my case).

I really enjoyed the addition of supporting player Jack Warden (whom I loved in the original 12 Angry Men) as a sounding board for both father and daughter, spouting words of wisdom and showing up in a third act twist that had the minimum legwork, but really came as a shock. He was a great actor and filled the shoes of his role much better than the token CIA villain and his goons.

Personally, I think the weakest thing of this movie was the love story between Harmon and Ryan. Sure, they were cute together, though, I couldn't stop laughing when she popped his shirt buttons and buried herself in his chest hair, but the investigation lasts the length of the movie... and there's no real sense of time. Sure, a few of the lines imply that they've been seeing each other quite a bit, but compression of time for the hour-forty it fits into? Just can't believe it.

Especially when she starts dancing with an officer at an O-club function that she went with Harmon to, obviously trying to push him away. It's silly and clumsily done.

If I were to rewrite/reshoot, I'd add more about the catalyst for the whole movie, the murder of Harmon's female MP ex-partner. There was plenty of implied history there to be delved concerning her, Harmon, Connery, and first and second act villain Lawrence.

Still it's a harmless enough film that could've been done better, but was a pretty good example in the era.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~