The Home of Forgotten Stories

I think Sleepless in Seattle is a terrible movie. In all seriousness, it’s one of the worst romances on record.

First of all, she comes this close to marrying a man she’s not in love with (presumably because she’s desperate to get married), but let’s explore why isn’t she in love with this perfectly wonderful man. The movie openly states that it’s because she’s looking for magic in the relationship, and that the magic is represented by the voice she hears on the radio, but in the meantime, it’s slyly slid in under the radar that he wears a CPAP machine and has horrible allergies. Sending the quiet message that a romantic partner must absolutely be a physically perfect specimen.

If there were anything else wrong with him, it wouldn’t be so awful, but there’s just not. He’s sweet. He’s compatible with her. He wants her family to like him. He likes to dance with her. He loves spending time with her. He thinks about things like wedding registries, and wants to participate. He even sweetly lets her go her own way when she finally makes it clear that he’s not her choice. If she’s not in love with him, she’s not in love with him, but the movie has to present him as less desirable somehow, and the choice was to portray him as having absolutely no character flaws, which just makes the whole storyline somewhat grotesque.

The CPAP scene in particular is offensive. It openly mocks the notion that it’s possible to have sleep apnea and be sexy at the same time. Meanwhile sending the blatant message that 99.99% of your sleeping life is going to be utterly unromantic, if it resembles anything like reality. Basic bodily functions, like, say, breathing, have no place in the movie’s concept of a romantic marriage.

Second of all, she stalks the man she’s obsessed with.

She stalks him. There’s no other word for it. She hunts him down on the internet; the fact that it would be far easier to do so in recent years doesn’t excuse the way she abuses her then-limited access to the data. She crosses the country to meet a man who has no idea who she is, and whose one brush with fame was completely accidental and undesired. He never asked to be famous, or sought it out in any way, which makes it doubly inappropriate that she’s crossing continents to fangirl all over him.

And she is obsessed with him. She falls for him because of listening to him talk for less than five minutes about his dead wife that he’s still grieving over. After that point, he completely dominates every choice she makes for the remainder of the movie. And she completely ignores the fact that she knows, from the radio program, that he’s dating someone new (I supposed it’s not necessary to mention the fact that the new woman has absolutely nothing wrong with her except for a slightly annoying laugh).

Neither the word “stalk” nor the word “obsess” apply to the healthy pursuit of a relationship. But let’s not let psychology 101 interfere with True Love.

The son character is no less obsessed; he runs away from home trying to get to his concept of the perfect new mother that he acquires from a single mailed letter. This isn’t cute. This is a great potential way to get kidnapped and murdered. This kid hits the streets of New York City with a backpack and a teddy bear. And when the dad finds him, the dad apologizes to him, rather than saying, “I’m putting you in therapy immediately and you’re not going to quit until you’re 18 and I can’t force you to go anymore.”

The couple that the movie spends the entire time trying to artificially paste together don’t speak to each other until the final scene of the movie (and then it’s about ten words), and then they magically hold hands, and then the movie unceremoniously ends.

And there’s absolutely no explanation on this Earth why I still have to watch the damn thing every time it comes on Showtime.