WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING. Directed by Jon Turteltaub; written by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric Lebow; produced by Joe Roth and Roger Birnbaum for Hollywood Pictures. Starring Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman. Rated PG.
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A little slow to get started, once it I gets going, While You Were Sleeping makes a pretty fair little romantic comedy.
Like some of the best old screwball comedies, this one has a complicated plot premise based on chains of misunderstanding.
Lucy (Bullock) has an old-fashioned crush on Peter, (Peter Gallagher) a handsome yuppie who comes through her transit turnstile (on Chicago's El) every day, but whom she's never actually met.
Then one day Peter is mugged and pushed onto the tracks. Lucy saves him from an onrushing train, but he's out cold. Later, in the hospital, Lucy makes an under-the-breath comment about marrying the comatose commuter, a nurse overhears, and voila! Lucy becomes a fiancee.
Peter's family being somewhat overwhelming, as well as excessively nice to her, Lucy finds it impossible to explain the mistake and plays along as a future daughter-in-law, while Peter stays in the coma, unable to set things straight.
That is until Peter's brother Jack (Pullman) shows up. Not too surprisingly, by this time in the script, Lucy and Jack fall for each other, complicating an already tangled situation almost beyond all hope of resolution. But, of course, it's not beyond hope, since this is the movies, and a happy, satisfying ending eventually occurs.
The course to this ending is a little bumpy, though. In addition to the too-slow pace of the first half-hour or so, not all of the jokes work as well as the filmmakers probably hoped. Glynis Johns, in particular, as a daffy grandmother, has several punch lines that fall flat. And it isn't always easy to believe that the pretty, perky Bullock could possibly be as lonely as Lucy is supposed to be.
But she and Pullman make a sweet, appealing couple. And his loyalty to his brother, in the face of his growing affection for Lucy, gives the plot just the right amount of tension to make that happy ending all the more pleasant.
If about three quarters of a really good, old-fashioned romantic comedy (there's no sex and even precious little discussion of it) is enough for you, then you'll enjoy While You Were Sleeping.
May 10, 1995