WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is a cute puppy-dog of a film
with a cute puppy-dog of an actress. The film called
for a collection of characters that is a little weird
but adorable. It was close, but the family was never as
winning as intended. This is an amusing but fluffy
romantic comedy. Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4)
Preston Sturges could have had a good time with this story. John Turteltaub is no Preston Sturges, but he is at least able to make it into an amiable comedy. Sandra Bullock plays Lucy, a drab and lonely token-booth attendant for the Chicago Transit Authority. Her life is dreams. She dreams of travel, She dreams of getting a nice boy friend. She dreams of having a family. And Turteltaub dreams of the audience believing Sandra Bullock as a drab and lonely token-booth attendant with no boyfriends. Lucy does have a dream boyfriend, a well-heeled and handsome man who comes by her CTA station. One lonely Christmas the family-less Lucy is working and her dream boyfriend is mugged on the platform and falls into the path of an approaching train. Lucy saves his life and takes the unconscious man--Peter as she discovers his name is (appropriately played by Peter Gallagher)--to a hospital. There a careless comment gives a nurse the impression that Lucy is really the now-comatose Peter's fiancee. In the sort of comedy of errors that can occur only in the most contrived of stories, when Peter's somewhat strange family show up, they hear Lucy referred to as Peter's fiancee and they also believe it. Peter's family adopts Lucy as a prospective family member that they have never met. Further complicating matters is that Peter's brother Jack (Bill Pullman) is skeptical that brother Peter would have gotten engaged to Lucy without Jack finding out. He sets out to prove that Lucy is not what she appears to be.
This is a film with its heart in the right place, and one with a good sense of humor. But it just does not have the polished style ofa professionally made film. There are mismatched styles of humor that often conflict with each other. Pieces of slapstick are thrown into what is mostly a comedy of personality. Much of the humor is built around the eccentric conversations of Peter's family. Somehow this joke just does not work as well as scriptwriters Daniel G. Sullivan and Frederic Lebow think it does.
Sandra Bullock has been winning in SPEED and was likable in DEMOLITION MAN, but here she overplays her personality. She gives the kind of performance in which you can read her every emotion, just a little too exaggerated, on her face. That works for a while, but the slight overplaying eventually makes her seem sappy and unctuous. It may well have been a director's decision since Peter Gallagher also seems to have the same problem, though luckily for Gallagher he is not on the screen and conscious long enough to allow it to become irritating. Several good veteran character actors are also present including Jack Warden, Glynis Johns, and Peter Boyle are present but do not have sufficient screen time to show us any acting touches that we have not seen from them many times previously.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING is no great classic of cinema. In fact, to all appearances it no more than a light Christmas programmer that got delayed in its release. If it has no great virtues, at least it has no great faults either. This piece of feather-light holiday fluff gets a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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