求『西雅不眠夜』的一篇英文影评。

That's for "Sleepless in Seattle"（西雅图未眠夜)

Review/Film; When Sam Met Annie, Or When Two Meet Cute

By VINCENT CANBY

Nora Ephron's "Sleepless in Seattle" is a feather-light romantic comedy about two lovers who meet for the first time in the last reel. It's a stunt, but it's a stunt that works far more effectively than anybody in his right mind has reason to expect. Not since "Love Story" has there been a movie that so shrewdly and predictably manipulated the emotions for such entertaining effect. Be warned, though: "Sleepless in Seattle" is a movie you may hate yourself in the morning for having loved the night before.

The situation is this: the recently widowed Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks), a successful architect, has moved to Seattle from Chicago to try to assuage his sorrow. One night, his 8-year-old son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), calls a late-night radio talk-show psychiatrist. It is Christmas, and the boy is worried about his dad. The furious, embarrassed Sam then gets on the phone. Before he realizes it, he's talking about his perfect marriage before a large portion of the United States population.

Three thousand miles away, Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), a successful feature writer for The Baltimore Sun, is driving to Washington to spend the holidays with her wimpish fiance's family. Annie hears Sam's confession and is so moved that she nearly drives off the road. She's bewitched by something about his voice, the ill-concealed lump in his throat, his choice of cliches. She doesn't immediately know it, but she's in love and will one day wind up with Sam to live in the 1990's version of the kind of bliss that old-fashioned movies used to celebrate.

Evoked by "Sleepless in Seattle," through clips and numerous references in dialogue and soundtrack music, is Leo McCarey's sentimental 1957 classic "An Affair to Remember," a movie that instantly reduces every woman in the new film to tears. "An Affair to Remember" serves as an interesting yardstick for "Sleepless in Seattle." It a reminder of just how much smaller and more self-conscious romantic movies are today than they were when they were played by such icons as Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, when love could be a matter of life and death, and when fate, not an interfering television-bred child, shaped the outcome.

It's clear that Ms. Ephron understands this. "Sleepless in Seattle" is so cannily concocted that it somehow manages to stand above the sitcom world in which it is set. You won't for a minute misidentify that world. It's there in the unquestioned material perks enjoyed both by Sam and Annie, in the picturesque houseboat on which Sam and Jonah live in Seattle, in the tone of the wisecracks delivered by Annie's pal Becky (Rosie O'Donnell) and even in the nature of Sam's grief.

Sam's beautiful first wife, Maggie (Carey Lowell), materializes from time to time in fantasy sequences, but the movie makes sure that his grief is not contagious. The audience knows, from Ms. Lowell's billing if nothing else, that Maggie is history, that Sam has a woman with co-star status waiting for him around the corner. The movie uses grief, but makes it safely meaningless. This is, after all, the world of sitcoms.

Mr. Hanks and Ms. Ryan are terrifically attractive, each somehow persuading the audience of the validity of all of the things that keep them apart and then miraculously bring them together. Annie's fiance, Walter (Bill Pullman), is a comic nerd for our time. He's not ridiculous in the manner of the other men once played by Ralph Bellamy, but he does have a large problem with allergies. Walter is allergic to almost everything.

No great effort is made to explain how Annie could have fallen in love with him in the first place. He's a plot function, as is Victoria (Barbara Garrick), the woman Sam courts halfheartedly in Seattle. She is pretty and has a manic giggle that would curdle hollandaise sauce. The film was made by the book.

Yet Ms. Ephron and her associates create a make-believe world so engaging that "Sleepless in Seattle" is finally impossible to resist. Both Mr. Hanks and Ms. Ryan bring substance to their roles. The film will probably call up memories of "When Harry Met Sally," although "Sleepless in Seattle," compared with that denatured version of a Woody Allen comedy, looks like a stunning original.

It's not easy keeping apart two lovers who the film tells you are made for each other at the beginning, but the digressions are often extremely funny. The manner by which they are united is outrageous and painfully cute, but finally satisfying. Ms. Ephron makes Machiavellian use of soundtrack music.

There's no doubt how you're supposed to respond when you hear "Over the Rainbow," "Star Dust," "Bye-Bye, Blackbird" and "Jingle Bells." Every now and then, however, there is a comic invention that lifts the movie up, up and away, as with the choices of "As Times Goes By," which more or less opens the film, and "Make Someone Happy," which ends the movie, both sung by the incomparable, gravel-voiced Jimmy Durante in a way that puts the lyrics in movingly bold relief.

In a way, "Sleepless in Seattle" is vamping for time from start to finish. It knows that it couldn't possibly show us (at least, for any length of time) a Sam and Annie together as fully in love as they are apart, before they've met. That would have to be an anticlimax. The movie, in which pacing is all, stops on a dime.

"Sleepless in Seattle" has been rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It includes some vulgar language. Sleepless In Seattle Directed by Nora Ephron; screenplay by Ms. Ephron, David S. Ward and Jeff Arch, based on a story by Mr. Arch; director of photography, Sven Nykvist; edited by Robert Reitano; music by Marc Shaiman; production designer, Jeffrey Townsend; produced by Gary Foster; released by Tri-Star Pictures. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is rated PG. Sam Baldwin . . . Tom Hanks Jonah Baldwin . . . Ross Malinger Annie Reed . . . Meg Ryan Suzy . . . Rita Wilson Greg . . . Victor Garber Rob . . . Tom Riis Farrell Maggie Baldwin . . . Carey Lowell Walter . . . Bill Pullman Barbara Reed . . . Le Clanche du Rand Cliff Reed . . . Kevin O'Morrison Dennis Reed . . . David Hyde Pierce Betsy Reed . . . Valerie Wright Becky . . . Rosie O'Donnell Jay . . . Rob Reiner