Movie Review: Hanging Up (2000)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Diane Keaton  

Starring: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthau, Cloris Leachman  

Running Time: 94 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, event planner Eve (Meg Ryan) is a working mom and leads a harried life. Her schedule gets more complicated when her father Lou (Walter Matthau), a retired Hollywood screenwriter who once met John Wayne, is hospitalized with worsening dementia. Eve's two sisters do little to share the care burden: driven businesswoman Georgia (Diane Keaton) owns and publishes a women's magazine, while self-absorbed Maddy (Lisa Kudrow) is a daytime soap actress. Lou's rapid deterioration interferes with a large event Eve is planning. 

What Works Well: The next-to-impossible pressures of juggling home, career, and aging parents are effectively represented through Eve's character. Her choppy relationships and strained bonds with her sisters add further texture, as the burden of care falls on the sibling most willing to say "yes" to every request. In his final screen role, Walter Matthau captures the agony of dementia, a fading life reduced to endless repetition and imposing an unmanageable burden on the one family member most willing to help. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The attempt to balance drama and comedy does not quite work. Humour is wedged in mostly through Eve's frazzled mannerisms, while the material cries out for an overall more sombre tone. Too many scenes feature phone calls and other phone calls interrupting phone calls, resulting in repetitive and quite tiresome "gotta go" non-conversations. The ending rushes to resolutions through over-simplification and juvenile antics.

Key Quote:

Doctor (from the hospital, on the phone to Eve): Your father is missing.

Eve: Check in the bed of every single female patient!

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Movie Review: Promised Land (1987)

A drama about dreams both broken and non-existent, Promised Land threatens to say something important but remains mired in the company of uninteresting characters.

It's 1984, and in the small town of Ashville, Utah, David Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the high school basketball star, dating cheerleader Mary Daley (Tracy Pollan) and destined for a college scholarship. Their classmate Danny Rivers (Kiefer Sutherland) is socially awkward and sarcastically nicknamed Senator. He also has a crush on Mary. Despite having no plans or prospects, Danny quits school and leaves town without telling his parents.

Two years later, David is a police officer back in Ashville, his college and sports dreams already shattered. Mary comes back from her college for a Christmas visit. Meanwhile, Danny is in Nevada, squatting in an abandoned warehouse. On a whim, he marries Bev Sykes (Meg Ryan), a woman he met just three days prior. Danny and Bev start the long drive to Ashville where he wants to reconnect with his parents. Meanwhile, David and Mary are unsure where their relationship is going.

Apparently based on real events, Promised Land never quite gets to whatever profound statements it was seeking. With the backing of executive producer Robert Redford, writer and director Michael Hoffman has potentially interesting small-town social topics to work with and an eye for beauty within sparse landscapes. But the movie lands flat, bogged down with David and Mary as one bickering maybe-couple, while Danny and Bev embark on an tedious road trip. 

The jock who peaked in high school, the cheerleader blossoming in college, the misfit still discovering himself, and the wild free-spirit are all defined within the opening 30 minutes. The script lacks meaningful context, progression, and compelling arcs, and the acting often dips into melodramatics. The young cast members do their best while in some cases still learning their craft, but are far from rescuing the sparse material and clunky dialogue.

David as a police officer loves shooting his service revolver at a makeshift shooting range, and the borderline unstable Bev also has a gun, so the hints of something bad about to happen are clear. Similarly obvious is the theme of young men from small towns struggling to make something of themselves with minimal familial support, while Ronald Reagan hovers over the country from his television perch. Promised Land is an idea waiting to happen, getting lost both in small town angst and the featureless desert.



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Movie Review: You've Got Mail (1998)

A romantic comedy with would-be lovers on either side of the corporate fence, You've Got Mail delves into the emerging online world to update a story of virtual friends and real-world foes.

Using the online pseudonyms Shopgirl and NY152, New Yorkers Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) correspond through daily emails, having met in a chat room. In the real world Kathleen owns a small children's bookstore she inherited from her mother, and is in a relationship with newspaper columnist Frank (Greg Kinnear). Joe runs the giant Fox Books megastore discount chain and is romantically attached to book publisher Patricia (Parker Posey).

With Joe about to open a new Fox Books location and drive Kathleen's store out of business, they meet and she shuns him as a heartless businessman. Meanwhile their daily emails develop into a deep friendship, until Joe discovers that his online soulmate is also his real world nemesis. He has to find a way to turn a digital romance into a true love affair.

Updating 1940's The Shop Around The Corner and taking advantage of emerging social media trends, You've Got Mail pulls off the far-fetched central premise with practised ease. Director Nora Ephron co-wrote the script with her sister Delia, and reunites with Hanks and Ryan from the 1993 hit Sleepless In Seattle. The pre-established chemistry is evident and helps navigate the bumpy patches, especially a rather prolonged final act.

The dichotomy between real-world sparring and on-line friendship drives the narrative. Ephron establishes Kathleen and Joe's physical proximity early: they navigate the same streets everyday, oblivious to each other and their digital friendship, virtually connected in a practically disconnected world. The difference in their behaviour is stark. Benefitting from on-line anonymity and a "no telling details" rule, the emails represent their truer selves, full of honesty and self-doubt. In person Kathleen's shield goes up and she understandably rails at Joe's corporateness before giving herself a chance to know him as a person.

A sparkling New York is scrubbed clean and serves as a typically idyllic rom-com backdrop. Consistent with the small store/big corporation conflict, Ephron allows street-level businesses to provide the city's heartbeat, scenes of shutters opening to start the day serving as the source of streetscape vibrancy.

Hanks and Ryan radiate star power and next-door genuineness. Although Ephron at times appears to encourage theatrically ditzy performances from both, they settle down and excel in two separate modes: in-person clashes and behind-the-keyboard narration.

Meanwhile the edges of the story are kept busy, with a strong but over-elaborate supporting cast. In addition to a funny and hyper Parker Posey as his girlfriend, Joe Fox is surrounded by a best friend (Dave Chapelle), as well as a father (Dabney Coleman) and a grandfather who both have young children. Greg Kinnear's caustic newspaper opinionist is a good match for Kathleen, and she also has three store employees (Jean Stapleton, Steve Zahn and Heather Burns) to worry about. Unsurprisingly, several of the side-characters fade away or are just unceremoniously dropped due to crowding.

But despite some well-intended bloat, You've Got Mail succeeds in parsing togetherness apart, and delivers a breezy romance.



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Movie Review: The Women (2008)

A social drama with a comedy sprinkling, The Women adapts the classic play to tackle 21st century issues.

The film is set in New York and Connecticut. Although she gave up on a fashion design career to look after her family, dedicated mother and philanthropist Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) believes she has the perfect comfortable well-to-do life. But her best friend Sylvie (Annette Bening), a high-powered magazine editor, learns from Saks manicurist Tanya (Debi Mazar) that perfume sales girl Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes) is having an affair with Mary's husband Stephen.

Sylvie and Mary's other friends Edie (Debra Messing) and Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith) are torn whether to tell Mary; she finds out anyway, straight from Tanya. Mary's mother Catherine (Candice Bergen) encourages her to wait before confronting Stephen. Meanwhile, Sylvie is struggling to improve the fortunes of her fashion magazine, and finds her ideas out of touch with popular opinion. Mary eventually confronts Stephen and starts to re-examine her life, unintentionally heaping pressure on her teenaged daughter Molly (India Ennenga).

The play was written in 1936 and the classic film adaptation arrived in 1939. Here Diane English writes, directs and co-produces an update to the story of women navigating the choppy waters of family, relationships, careers, friendships, sacrifice and personal expectations. Once again the film consists exclusively of women in every role, including all the children and extras (and more than likely, all the pet dogs are also female).

The film delves into all the expected topics. Mary is forced to assess her own priorities, and whether she allowed her various roles to subsume who she is as a person. Crystal represents a case study in women who appeal to vulnerable men's most base instincts. Sylvie had one failed marriage and is now happily single and focused on her career, but has to reckon with her values diverging from what is popular, placing all she worked for at risk, including her friendship with Mary.

More superficially, the pregnant Edie is a baby factory, and Alex is a lesbian, the only one among the friends blissfully going through life unconcerned by men. Young Molly is struggling with body image issues and the fallout from her mother's disintegrating marriage.

Not that The Women offers any profound new thoughts, nor is it expected to. This is a polished, glossy and sometimes humorous representation of relatively wealthy and comfortable women, with all the depth of a monthly advertising-dominated magazine. For all the concerns and tensions at hand, self-empowered resolutions will be found for all, and English still finds time for the requisite fashion show montage and a baby delivery scene in a double-headed climax.

The cast members share the screen time, Ryan and Bening most prominent but never being asked to stretch. Heavyweight star power appears in the form of Carrie Fisher and Bette Midler providing single-scene support, while Cloris Leachman as Mary's housekeeper contributes resigned comic relief.

The Women freshens up the challenges, but does not stray too far from cushy and safe film territory.

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Movie Review: D.O.A. (1988)

A murder mystery, D.O.A. possesses some obvious style but is badly let-down by a weak script.

In a rainstorm at Christmas time, Professor Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid) stumbles into a police station and announces that he has been murdered. He recounts the past 36 hours of his life and the rest of the film unfolds in flashback. Dexter teaches English literature, and his talented but troubled student Nick (Robert Knepper), an aspiring writer, shockingly appears to commit suicide by throwing himself off a campus building roof. Dexter and his wife Gail (Jane Kaczmarek) are going through a painful divorce, while his friend Hal (Daniel Stern) is celebrating a promotion and the upcoming publication of a book.

After a night of heavy drinking with his attractive and starstruck student Sydney (Meg Ryan), Dexter discovers that he has been poisoned and has just hours to live. His frantic investigation leads him to Nick's funeral, where Nick's sponsor Mrs. Fitzwaring (Charlotte Rampling), her daughter Cookie (Robin Johnson) and the family chauffeur Bernard (Christopher Neame) are hiding shocking secrets of their own.

Co-directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, D.O.A. is as remake of the 1949 film noir. The 1988 version finds modest success with a few stylistic elements, but overall sinks into a sea of familiar and overstuffed plot elements. The mystery is uninteresting, the perpetrator easy to guess, and the evil plot, once revealed, borders on the ridiculous.

The opening 20 minutes are promising enough. The opening scene hits the target, a near-collapse Dexter storming into the police station and announcing his own murder. The professor and his surrounding circle of students, colleagues and family are introduced with admirable efficiency planting the seeds for what could have been an engaging story. Dexter has given up on writing, Gail has given up on the marriage, Nick is tortured and seeking affirmation, Sydney is salivating for a shot at her professor (despite Meg Ryan, at 27, being too old for the role) and the circle of academics contains the usual wolves in tweed clothing.

But after Nick's death, D.O.A. unravels quickly. Both Dexter's behaviour and his emotions are poorly written and sloppily executed, and the film descends into a series of contrived conflicts, more crimes and murders, and clumsy attempts at suspense. The story wades knee deep into convolutions that may have worked with more talent, in black and white, and in the 1940s. Here, the sordid affairs of Mrs. Fitzwaring, her multiple husbands, out-of-control daughter and menacing chauffeur are tiresome and derivative distractions.

The body count mounts at an alarming pace, and if it wasn't already too easy to guess the murderer, it gets much simpler as the rest of the cast members are methodically knocked off, seemingly without attracting a single investigative police officer.

Dennis Quaid struggles against the weak material and comes up empty, and the rest of the cast members barely register. It may not exactly be dead on arrival, but D.O.A. expires early in any event.

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Movie Review: Kate And Leopold (2001)

A fantasy romance, Kate And Leopold trades on the appeal of stars Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman, but is an otherwise frivolous and easily forgettable exercise.

New York City, 1876. The Duke of Albany Leopold Mountbatten (Jackman) has little patience for social niceties and is dabbling with an invention that looks like a scale model of an elevator. At an upper crust party Leopold spots and chases weird intruder Stuart Besser (Liev Schreiber), who is from the future. Stuart leads Leopold to a time portal accessed by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River.

They land in New York of 2001, where Stuart has just broken up with his downstairs neighbour Kate McKay (Ryan). When Stuart is waylaid after an elevator shaft mishap, Kate and Leopold start spending time together. She is initially sceptical of his story but gradually a romance blossoms. Kate is a marketing executive chasing a promotion and being sexually harassed by her boss J.J. (Bradley Whitford). Leopold gets involved in filming her latest advertisement, and his chivalrous and uncompromising integrity prove attractive as he defends Kate's honour at every turn.

Directed and co-written by James Mangold, Kate And Leopold is an old school and utterly predictable romance. With just shadings of humour and lacking any cutting edge, the film rides on lush production values and a fantasy romance-across-time premise, and even then soft pedals the concept. Leopold is quick to adjust to his new surroundings, and before long the film defaults to a New York City travelogue through the eyes of any other visitor.

At over two hours the film is unnecessarily long and the padding is obvious. Once Leopold makes the jump to the present Mangold has to kill 90 minutes of running time to get to his rather tame climax, and the paucity of material is painfully obvious. The film surrenders to subplots and distractions, including a long-winded chase of a purse snatcher through central park and Kate's slow-motion harassment by her lecherous boss, hiding in a suit and wielding his power to attempt sexual conquest.

It's all in the name of creating opportunities for Leopold to ride to the rescue on a white horse, literally in the case of the purse snatcher, and forcing Kate to consider giving up her modern life and career to be with her knight in shining armour. In better hands this would have been an interesting dilemma to debate, but in this world of fantasy romance, the push and pull between women's empowerment and the perceived chivalry of four generations past is treated with utmost simplicity.

Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman do what is asked, looking disarmingly great for the cameras and representing all-good characters just waiting for the right love to come along. Kate And Leopold is a sanguine reverie, and disappears as quickly as a lightweight dream.

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Movie Review: Top Gun (1986)

A glitzy drama and clunky romance set in the world of elite navy aviators, Top Gun has all the slickness of a polished sales pitch, and all the emotional depth that can be expected when hardware is the subject of worship.

Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is a cocky, instinctive naval pilot, living under the cloud of his father, also a Navy pilot who died in mysterious circumstances. Maverick flies F-14A Tomcats with his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) Nick "Goose" Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards). After a close encounter with enemy MiG 28s over the Indian Ocean, Maverick and Goose are chosen to join the elite "Top Gun" aerial combat training school at Miramar, Florida.

The intense training features numerous flights to sharpen dogfighting skills, overseen by the legendary "Viper" (Tom Skerritt) and "Jester" (Michael Ironside). Maverick finds himself in an alpha male competition with Tom "Iceman" Kazanski (Val Kilmer), a more cerebral pilot, for the prize of top graduate. Maverick also starts a steamy relationship with Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), an astrophysicist and civilian instructor. With the course drawing to a close and Maverick locked in an intense competition with Iceman, tragedy strikes, severely shaking Maverick's self-belief.

A thrilling piece of 1980s confectionery, Top Gun is ridiculous, mindless fun. Every man has a hokey nickname, every woman melts in front of the military uniforms, and every line of dialogue is cringe-worthy. The romance is klutzy, Kelly McGillis puts herself in the running for least convincing astrophysicist in film history (have there been others?), and the music serves as a reminder about how terrifically awful 1980s soundtracks could contrive to be. The geopolitics are at kindergarten level while the manly competitions make it all the way to Grade 8 maturity.

And yet. There is something about the unabashed gloss of Top Gun that allows it to rise above. Director Tony Scott displays a genuine flair for transforming lethal machinery into objects of desire, and Top Gun is filled with quite magnificent aerial photography. The glistening sun, the open skies, the golden silhouettes, and the roar of overpowered fighter jets designed to manoeuvre and kill with maximum efficiency are combined to create an irresistible aesthetic. As an advertisement for life as a navy pilot, the film is an undisputed winner.

Which all means that the story is utterly irrelevant, and serves as a distant backdrop to the sexually charged engines and people. And it's really best not to look too closely at all the decisions made by the military brass, culminating in sending young men off to war on their graduation day and shoving a pilot into combat while he is in a near catatonic state. It's drama torn from the pages of ideas too foolish to be considered as comics.

Tom Cruise continued his rapid rise to the very top with a magnetic performance as the moody, motorcycle-riding, Ray-Ban wearing Maverick. He does not need to act as much as be present and allow his natural pizzazz to glow, and he just radiates energy on the ground and in the sky. Val Kilmer displays a different kind of intensity, still charismatic but adding a snarly meanness. The other guys range from marginally goofy (Edwards as Goose) to pure macho (Skerritt and Ironside, taking it all too seriously).

The black hole is Kelly McGillis, and she threatens to swallow up the entire film with a stunningly unconvincing performance that screams vapid love interest, with Charlie reduced to a ten year old's idea of a fantasy woman. Deep in the cast, Meg Ryan shows up as Goose's wife and Tim Robbins makes a late appearance as a co-pilot.

While most of the individual elements fall flat, as a whole Top Gun amounts to a nonsensical success story. The film rides a crazy, unapologetic energy, buying into its own boyish joy, taking the breath away and inviting all to be swept into the thrill of the danger zone.

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Movie Review: Courage Under Fire (1996)

An intense, character-driven war drama, Courage Under Fire examines the damage that war inflicts on soldiers, and the rush to proclaim heroes as an easier alternative to confronting the fallibility of those who fight.

During a chaotic nighttime battle in the 1990/91 Gulf War, tank battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling (Denzel Washington) mistakenly opens fire on one of his own tanks, killing his friend Captain Boylar. After the war the error is hushed up by the army, but Serling is traumatized by the incident, growing detached from his family and turning to drink. As an easy and apparently straightforward assignment to help his recovery, Serling is appointed to investigate the potential posthumous award of a Medal of Honor to medical helicopter pilot Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan). She saved the crew of a downed chopper by destroying an enemy tank, but her own helicopter then crashed. Walden and her crew held out against enemy fire overnight, but she eventually died, seemingly heroically, before a rescue could be completed.

Serling sets out to find and talk to Walden's surviving crew members, including the injured Warrant Officer Rady (Tim Guinee), the withdrawn medical Specialist Ilario (Matt Damon), the macho Staff Sergeant Monfriez (Lou Diamond Phillips), and the very sick crew chief Sergeant Altameyer (Seth Gilliam). Their stories differ in small but key details, forcing Serling to delve deeper into what happened when Walden and her crew were pinned down overnight by enemy fire. With pressure mounting on Serling to finish his report and the nightmares from the friendly fire incident growing more intense, Serling finds that once again, the truth may be more difficult to handle than anyone cares to admit.

Courage Under Fire presents an intriguing battlefield mystery, with a tortured hero as the investigator trying to piece together the fragments of a disjointed story. Director Edward Zwick intertwines two key threads, as Serling pushes against his demons while tracking down each of Walden’s crew members to secure their version of a hellish night stranded in the Iraqi desert.

Every version is recreated on-screen, Zwick turning up the volume on an admittedly gripping drama of explosions, gunfire, and soldiers under extreme stress outnumbered and surrounded by the enemy. The variations in the story initially appear small and irrelevant, but some of the jigsaw pieces simply don't fit to Serling’s satisfaction, and he doggedly pursues a more complete picture of Karen Walden’s actions on that fateful night. When the truth finally emerges, it is both a victory and a defeat for the army, and a much messier and more complex narrative than the simple premise of a heroic pilot saving lives.

For all the noisy scenes of warfare, Courage Under Fire works because it’s the story of two compelling people. Serling exists in the present and is haunted by the past, Walden exists in the past and is being investigated in the present. The interaction between two perceived heroes who never met but are yet dropped into the same cauldron of convenient lies and easy labels forms the throbbing heart of the film.

The ending is less effective. Zwick and screenwriter Patrick Sheane Duncan opt for a crescendo of unrestrained positive emotion wrapped in the flag, the equivalent of an unnecessary sugar overdose.

Denzel Washington is magnetic as the army man tormented by the mistruths that the army is happily peddling on his behalf. Washington maintains a deliberate, controlled stance as Serling, never resorting to dramatics and remaining true to a good commanding officer’s convictions.  Ryan’s performance is predominantly limited to the one showcase scene repeated several times from different perspectives. Limited as it is, Karen Walden is a refreshing change from Ryan’s typical lightweight romance roles. Matt Damon, in one of his early noticeable screen appearances, is frighteningly emaciated as Specialist Ilario, a man wasting away from the stress of hiding more than his soul can bear. Scott Glenn has a small role as a nosy journalist.

Courage Under Fire packs plenty of impressive firepower, both on the battlefield and in the battle’s echo.

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Movie Review: Prelude To A Kiss (1992)

A romantic drama with fantastical elements, Prelude To A Kiss cleverly delves into intriguing topics but ultimately falls short of its mystical targets.

In Chicago, publishing house manager Peter Hoskins (Alec Baldwin) meets and falls in love with free-spirited bartender Rita Boyle (Meg Ryan). Peter experienced a rough childhood but maintains a positive outlook on life. By contrast Rita had a loving upbringing but is an abject pessimist despite a bubbly personality. Although she finds happiness with Peter, Rita never wants to have children because the world is an ugly place. Peter meets Rita's parents Dr. and Mrs. Boyle (Ned Beatty and Patty Duke), and soon thereafter Peter and Rita get married.

At the wedding ceremony, an uninvited old man called Julius (Sydney Walker) asks Rita for a kiss. She obliges, and he kisses her deeply. As the newlyweds start their honeymoon in Jamaica, Peter notices his bride is suddenly behaving very strangely. Indeed, she appears to be a completely different person than the woman he fell in love with. Upon returning to Chicago, the marriage is already in trouble, and Peter connects with Julius to try and understand what has happened to his Rita.

Craig Lucas adapted his own play to the screen, and the film version succeeds in liberating the story out of stage confines. Directed by Norman René, Prelude To A Kiss is a refreshingly different romance, introducing two likeable leads and using their genuine love to ask some big questions. Peter is challenged to face up to what it means to be in a devoted lifelong marriage, and his commitment to the vows stated so easily during the ceremony is tested early.  The bond between physical presence and the essence of the human soul becomes a central question for Peter to grapple with and resolve.

These are not easy themes to delve into, and Prelude To A Kiss inevitably gets in too deep, despite the best of intentions. The film surrenders to fantasy elements that are an essential if metaphorical gateway to core ideas, and in doing so detaches itself too far from reality to achieve any emotional resonance. The film becomes an interesting vehicle to spark conversation, but without itself leaving any form of lasting impression.

The performances from Baldwin and Ryan are appealing, and they generate an amiable chemistry. Baldwin is sincere and manages to hold the centre of the film together as realism takes a back seat to an alternative and supernatural world. Ryan is her typical slightly over-bubbly self, the dream girlfriend with a potentially tiresome habit of over emoting. Despite her excessive bright-eyed expressions, the film does suffer when Ryan is absent for a prolonged segment in the second half.

Stage actor Sydney Walker delivers a moving performance as the old man seeking an unconventional new lease on life, and his scenes with Baldwin critically find the right tone, preventing the film from descending into tripe. Stanley Tucci and Kathy Bates appear in smallish roles.

Prelude To A Kiss thoughtfully explores the magic of romance, without necessarily creating magically romantic moments.

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The Movies Of Meg Ryan

All movies starring Meg Ryan and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Top Gun (1986)

Promised Land (1987)

D.O.A. (1988)

When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Prelude To A Kiss (1992)

Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

Courage Under Fire (1996)

You've Got Mail (1998)

Hanging Up (2000)

Proof Of Life (2000)

Kate And Leopold (2001)

In The Cut (2003)

The Women (2008)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022, archival footage)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

An unashamedly syrupy romance, Sleepless In Seattle concocts a relationship between America's favourite perky sweetheart Meg Ryan and America's favourite sensitive everyman Tom Hanks. The film's dedication to the magic of love is strong enough to withstand the nuisance of the two leads living separate lives, a continent apart.

Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a widower struggling to get over the loss of his wife. With his eight year old son Jonah (Ross Malinger) in tow, Sam relocates to Seattle to try and start a new life, but 18 months later, his is still in the emotional doldrums. Desperate, Jonah calls-in to the national radio show of celebrity shrink Dr. Martha. Eventually Sam gets on the phone and Dr. Martha cajoles him into expressing his emotions to the whole country. Thousands of women listeners are touched by his story.

Among the listeners is Baltimore-based reporter Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), engaged to be married to the loving but insufferably predictable Walter (Bill Pullman). Annie finds herself inexplicably drawn to Sam, and begins to seriously doubt her relationship with Walter. Sam embarks on a tentative relationship with co-worker Victoria (Barbara Garrick), while unsanctioned interventions by Annie's friend Becky (Rosie O'Donnell) and Jonah attempt to prod Sam and Annie towards their joint destiny.

The magic of true love as imagined by women is the unshakable core of Sleepless In Seattle, and director Nora Ephron (who also co-wrote the script) in unapologetic in layering on the tear-inducing liquid sugar early and often in large, gooey spoonfuls. The soundtrack is a succession of classic romantic favourites including the likes of As Time Goes By, A Kiss To Build A Dream On and When I Fall In Love, and the movie borrows its themes from the 1957 Cary Grant - Deborah Kerr classic An Affair To Remember, which is only considered one of the most romantic films of all time.

Two of the hottest stars of the time, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan make for an appealing would-be couple, despite sharing precious little screen time with each other. Hanks portrays Sam as the perfect catch for any woman, as dictated by the script, while being genuinely affecting as a heartbroken husband and father struggling to overcome the loss of the true love of his life. Ryan regularly risks overplaying her cute America's sweetheart persona, often betraying an actress ever so slightly over-confident about how much the audience loves her. She makes up for it with some terrific reaction scenes where she commandingly reveals the stripped away essence of a woman realizing that true romance is both currently missing in her life and calling to her from the other end of the radio.

The supporting cast fulfils its mandate in contributing to the magic-of-true-love theme, with the consequence that some characters become so much cannon fodder as they stand in the way of the central relationship. Bill Pullman's Walter is set up as the sacrificial lamb, his character burdened with so many flaws that ditching him is merciful relief. Similarly, Victoria is saddled with a hyena laugh that, while comic, dooms her from behind the starting gate. Rosie O'Donnell and Rob Reiner get small roles as the token witty friends. Young Ross Malinger joined the long list of child actors whose debuts coincided with their best performance, and he was unfortunately unable to translate his excellent portrayal as Jonah into a meaningful career.

If the script replaces wit and realism with the quest for perfect love, it does leave room for a thread of humour. A satirical manly recounting of the tragic ending of The Dirty Dozen as an antidote to all the gushing estrogen hits the comic bulls-eye. Ephron also treads softly in a variety of locations, with Chicago, New York and Baltimore as well as Seattle all playing their role in the transcontinental love flow.

What Sleepless In Seattle lacks in subtlety, it makes up in honest intentions. This is a story of love at its most enchanting, the fairy with the magic wand perhaps not visible but very much in evidence.

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Movie Review: When Harry Met Sally...(1989)

A delightful romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally... established the new standard for the genre. Warm-hearted, funny and quirky, the film's two main star-crossed protagonists grow ever more likeable as they tentatively take their multi-year journey towards a cupid-defined destiny.

It's 1977. New graduates Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) share an 18 hour drive from the University of Chicago to New York, where they are both starting their careers, Harry as a lawyer and Sally in journalism. Prior to the drive they don't know each other, but during the journey they become sure that they don't like each other: Harry is an arrogant, fast-talking pessimist who is sure that he has the world already figured out. Sally is detail-oriented and a bit uppity. They argue about everything, including whether a man and woman can be just friends. Harry does not believe it to be possible: the sex part always gets in the way. Sally convinces herself that Harry is a creep because he seems to be coming onto her despite already having a girlfriend. They arrive in New York and coldly part ways.

Five years later, they accidentally meet again during a flight. Harry is mellowing a bit, now engaged to Helen, but still a motor-mouth with all the answers. Sally is in the throes of a deepening relationship with Joe, and optimistically love-struck. Although more civilized, they again part ways as soon as the flight lands.

Five years further on, they meet again at a New York bookstore. Both relationships have ruptured badly. Harry is heartbroken by the breakup of his marriage to Helen, while Sally is trying to hold herself together despite Joe leaving her because he did not want to start a family and she did. Gradually, Harry and Sally become best friends, sharing all the details, joys, and sorrows of their lives, supporting each other and developing a deep bond of dependence and affection while continuing to date other people. Sally's best friend Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Harry's best friend Jess (Bruno Kirby) also end up in a relationship together.

Sally is devastated when she hears that Joe is getting married and starting a family with a younger woman. When Harry comes to her apartment to comfort her, they end up making love, shattering the basis of their friendship. Harry and Sally have to decide whether or not to pick up the pieces and turn the wreckage of a friendship into the green roots of a romance.

The success of When Harry Met Sally... is based on a Nora Ephron script that works diligently to create two fully-rounded characters. The mannerisms, reactions, and emotions of Harry and Sally are established early on when they are brash graduates, and gradually evolve, soften and mature as life gently but surely scrubs away the edges. Director Rob Reiner guides the romance with a gentle hand, delicately adding New York City garnishings to create a perfect but understated feast.

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan were both catapulted into deserved stardom for their performances. Crystal had earlier made an impression in The Princess Bride and Throw Momma From The Train (both also directed by Reiner), but his performance as Harry elevated him into a leading star as a sensitive comic talent. Harry's journey is the more pronounced, including a detour into a long friendship that threatens to disprove his theory about friendships between men and women, but he then has to endure a lot of pain and no pleasure when the inevitable intervention of "the sex part" indeed proves his initial belief to be true.

Meg Ryan was designated as America's sweetheart and leading romantic lady after her performance as Sally. Defiant yet vulnerable, argumentative yet appealing, and attractive yet down to earth, Sally is most memorable for being so real: she captures, with just a dash of comic exaggeration, deeply human traits found in most women. And her impressive fake public orgasm in a New York deli immediately entered the hall of fame of classic movie scenes.

The central theme of the film is the nature of friendship between men and women, and the movie's warmest moments portray Harry and Sally as friends. There is a magical emotional depth to the scenes portraying the couple becoming platonic soul mates, and the film provides a complex answer to its core conundrum: yes, a strong bond of friendship may be formed between a man and a woman, but perhaps such a deep connection is really a pilot light for a flame waiting to be lit.

It takes them a long time, but not only do Harry and Sally finally realize that they are meant for each other, they also join the distinguished ranks of most memorable movie characters.

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