Christmas Movie Challenge: While You Were Sleeping (1995)

As I near the halfway mark in this year long Christmas Movie Challenge, I fancied getting my rom com on Christmas style. There are few seasonal romantic comedies, or rather more accurately there are very few good ones.

The battle to find a watchable one is a challenge in itself, Four Chritmases starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon made me depressed just by looking at the front cover, and Sarah Jessica Parker having family problems in The Family Stone looked like complete torture.

Buried behind a stack of far more credible and manly movies, was Sandra Bullock/Bill Pullman (not Bill Paxton) Christmas love fest While You Were Sleeping. I owned it so surely I must of liked it at some point, right?

Sandra Bullock was briefly Hollywood’ sweetheart, her girl next door looks and sassy charm made her a bankable and likable actress. She’s never been afraid to bounce to serious roles in A Time To Kill and Crash to a light hearted and Oscar winning role in The Blind Side.

Bullock plays Lucy, a lonely Chicago Transit token collector who has a serious crush on dashing commuter Peter (Peter Gallagher). After he is mugged and falls on the tracks, Lucy springs into action and saves him. This sets about a series of events that sees her mistaken for his girlfriend, and she slowly starts to fall for Peter’s brother Jack (Bill Pullman).

Director Jon Turteltaub does a solid job, he had a nice little run of enjoyable movies including Cool Runnings, Phenomenon, 2 National Treasures and who can forget the original 3 Ninjas motion picture.

There’s nothing new or ground breaking about any aspect of this film, but Sandy and Bill aided by support from Peter Boyle, Jack Warden and Michael Rispoli make a standard rom com just that little bit more classy. Whilst this movie is pure fluff, it’s all done in a endearing manner that you can’t help but warm to.

Bill Pullman is a neglected actor, after Independence Day gave him a shot at the blockbuster he opted for smaller movies and the recent series of Torchwood. Pullman stars in one of my favourite hidden gems, Zero Effect. Written and directed by Jake Kasden the movie was sharp, funny, and well made ironically it left zero effect on the box office and it’s not available on DVD in the UK.

While You Were Sleeping is shamelessly sentimental, very predictable and filled with a sugary sweet happy message. As that is exactly what you want for an all round watchable Christmas movie, what more could you ask for.