Hanging Up / Sleepless in Seattle

Amazon.com

Hanging Up
You've got to admire a movie that embraces womanhood as so few mainstream movies do, and Hanging Up deserves credit for combining issues of sisterhood and elderly parent care while relying on neuroses to carry its unconventional plot. But you've also got to lament this botched "dramedy" from screenwriting sisters Nora and Delia Ephron (adapting the latter's novel) and director Diane Keaton, who lack a coherent plan for illuminating their trio of female siblings. Despite a sharp focus on Meg Ryan as the middle sister Eve--a capable Los Angeles event planner--the movie never quite seems to know where it's going, and you feel like the best scenes are merely happy accidents. In exploring the foibles of family, Keaton fared better with her earlier film Unstrung Heroes. In addition to directing, Keaton plays the eldest sister Georgia, a celebrity magazine editor, and Lisa Kudrow is kid sister Maddy, a soap-opera actress who's nearly as self-absorbed as Georgia. They leave it to Eve to care for their declining father (Walter Matthau), a retired screenwriter who slips in and out of lucidity and is, at best, a cantankerous curmudgeon whose estranged wife (Cloris Leachman) has long since severed all family ties. This is potent material--at least it could have been--and Ryan admirably struggles to hold the film together. But it's ultimately a losing battle as the movie, so full of cell phones and disconnected people (hence the title), becomes disconnected itself, offering hollow humor and a few memorable moments with characters whose problems are too minimal to worry about. --Jeff Shannon

Sleepless in Seattle
The director and stars of 1998's You've Got Mail scored a breakthrough hit with this hugely popular romantic comedy from 1993, about a recently engaged woman (Meg Ryan) who hears the sad story of a grieving widower (Tom Hanks) on the radio and believes that they're destined to be together. She's single in New York, he lives in Seattle with a young son, but the cross-country attraction proves irresistible, and pretty soon Meg's on a westbound flight. What happens from there is ... well, you must have been living in a cave to have let this sweet-hearted comedy slip below your pop-cultural radar. There's little complexity or depth to writer-director Nora Ephron's cheesy tale of a romantic fait accompli, and more than a little contrivance to the subplots that threaten to keep Hanks and Ryan from actually meeting. But the purity of star chemistry here is hard to deny, and this may be the first film to indicate the more serious and sympathetic side of Hanks that is revealed in later roles. With its clever jokes about "chick movies" and repeated homage to the classic weeper An Affair to Remember, this may not be everybody's brand of amorous entertainment, but it's got an old-Hollywood charm that appeals to many a movie fan. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

1 hit + 1 flop = a poor choice for a double feature!.......2001-02-07

Why only 2 stars?? 5 stars for Sleepless in Seattle. -1 star for whoever chose to pair it on a double feature release with "Hanging Up". -2 stars for "Hanging Up".

I think they missed the boat on this one. "Sleepless In Seattle" was a fun romantic comedy, and being a classic movie buff, I really loved how they tied in the scenes and story from "An Affair To Remember". After the wonderful performances by Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, I was certainly eager to see Nora Ephron bring them together again in "You've Got Mail"; a sweet, modernized remake of the original "The Shop Around The Corner". Granted, it didn't do as good as "Sleepless", but it sure beat "Hanging Up"! So why didn't they feature "Mail" as the second feature? Let's see.... same lead actors, same director, both parallel previously made films, both did pretty well at the box office... I guess it wasn't obvious enough.

So, unfortuantely they chose to pair "Sleepless In Seattle" with the box office flop "Hanging Up" for this double feature. Just surf over to the reviews for "Hanging Up" and you'll probably ask the same question. Why?

My guess is that they threw these two movies together to bank on the continued success of "Sleepless In Seattle" in an attempt to make up for the financial loss that was suffered on "Hanging Up". But seriously, if you're looking to add a little romantic comedy to your movie collection, save some bucks and buy "Sleepless in Seattle" separately. "Hanging Up" is worth hanging up on! If you really want to see what you're not missing, spend a few bucks and rent it instead.

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