Sleepless in seatle film movie#

The ‘meet cute’, orchestrated by Sam’s son Jonah (Ross Malinger) is undercut by a great deal of snark. When the women get weepy over Affair, it is played for comedy, and Annie’s best friend Becky (a typically down-to-earth Rosie O’Donnell) tells her that her problem is that she doesn’t want to be in love, she wants “to be in love in a movie”.ĥ.

Sleepless in seatle film movie#

But it’s also a movie for people who enjoy mocking classic romantic movies. An Affair To Remember is both featured in and heavily discussed and referenced, right down to the meeting on the ‘top’ (or rather the observation deck) of the Empire State Building the opening song is ‘As Time Goes By’ from Casablanca.Ĥ. It’s a movie for people who love classic romantic movies. This is not about a quest for the perfect person – neither Sam (the aforementionedly-delicious Tom Hanks) nor Annie (Meg Ryan) are looking for love. Compare this to the ‘singleton’ opening monologue of Bridget Jones’s Diary. And let’s face it, the world of liking rom-coms in the first place is deeply uncool anyway.Ģ. Except Harry popularised the irritating idea of ‘high-maintenance’ women and Billy Crystal is nowhere near as lickable (so very much not a typo for ‘likeable’) as Tom Hanks – it may be a more authentic movie about love but it isn’t nearly as romantic.

It is not ‘cool’ to have it as your favourite you’re supposed to prefer the earlier Nora Ephron/Meg Ryan outing When Harry Met Sally. My favourite and (subjectively, problematically) the best. 25 years after its first release, it still is. So when I say ‘ Sleepless In Seattle is the greatest romantic comedy of all time’ what I really mean is, it’s my favourite. It’s a flattening-out of something that should be layered.įavourites, on the other hand, are different. in New York, and the couple seem destined to settle for unadventurous domesticity at Tiffany & Co, 727 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street.Can we ever really label a work of art as ‘the best’ of its kind? Surely to do so is reductionist, to suggest that experiencing something – a book, a movie, a painting, a play, a dance, a song – is a quantitative, rather than qualitative experience. Which can’t be good news for poor Walter, when she meets up with him at the Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue at 59th Street.

Smitten Annie is soon whizzing across the States to the northwest, where she spies on Sam playing with his son at Alki Beach Park, Alki Avenue SW at 58th Avenue SW, on the northwest shore of West Seattle. In 1993, the restaurant stood at 1904 4th Avenue, but has since moved premises, though not too far, to 2001 Fourth Avenue at Virginia Street. He takes her for a meal at the Dahlia Lounge, one of Seattle’s top restaurants, where Annie’s hired detective surreptitiously photographs the couple. It’s also in the market that Sam shops with his prospective date, Victoria, she of the hyena-laugh. Meanwhile, Sam’s pal, Jay ( Rob Reiner), is giving him some man-to-man advice about the mysteries of dating, sex and tiramisu in the Athenian Inn, 1517 Pike Place ( tel: 206.624.7166), a breakfast and lunch eaterie in the Main Arcade of Seattle’s landmark Pike Place Market. The wonderfully elaborate library, where Annie visits her brother Dennis ( David Hyde Pierce) to talk over her creeping doubts about marriage, is the Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1 East Mount Vernon Place. Sleepless In Seattle location: Annie visits her brother at the library: Peabody Institute, Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore