It's Love at First Listen for Annie in Sleepless in Seattle

“Do you believe that two people can be connected? Like soulmates?” This is the question that gentle Libby poses to The Teddy Bear Formerly Known as Hurley in Everybody Loves Hugo, his only centric episode of LOST’s sixth season. They’ve never met in this intriguing timeline in which everything seems slightly askew, but Libby can’t shake the feeling that he is her destiny. Crazy, right? Or could there be something to it?

This was the scene that kept replaying in my mind as I watched Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle for the first time in years. With Libby, it’s a glimpse on TV that sparks the sense of recognition. For Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), the young woman in the movie, it’s hearing him on the radio. After his precocious 8-year-old son Jonah (Ross Malinger) calls in to a radio show to discuss the sad state of his dad’s life, recently widowed Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) reluctantly spills his guts to radio psychiatrist Dr. Marcia Fieldstone (Caroline Aaron).

Annie is not the only woman who feels an instant connection; hundreds of women write to him after the show airs, offering to help him dip into the dating scene again. But Annie is our focus, and we’re meant to believe that her attraction to him is deeper. That they truly are soulmates. Which would mean, it seems, that Sam has two, since all indications are that he and his wife Maggie (Carrie Lowell) shared an idyllic relationship, and now he can scarcely function without her. Early in the movie, Sam states, “It doesn’t happen twice.” That’s not to say that a person can’t have two happy, fulfilling marriages. But if he and Annie were "MFEO" ("made for each other," one of the annoying acronyms coined by Jonah’s even more precocious friend Jessica (Gaby Hoffman)), where does that leave Maggie?

That aspect of the movie bothers me a bit. Jonah, like Eddie in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, is obsessed with finding a replacement mom. “I’m starting to forget her,” he sadly confides at one point, but mostly he seems to be okay with that. He wants to get the show on the road. Sam doesn’t. Sam seems like a very real, reasonable guy who spends most of the movie in a bit of a haze. He’s a devoted dad; that’s his one defining characteristic here. But he still misses his wife terribly and just isn’t sure how to proceed in her absence.

Sam is the one unwittingly caught up in this, annoyed by his son’s initial interference and later fixation on a woman who lives on the opposite coast. Throughout the movie, he is all practicality – except on the three occasions on which he actually sees Annie. The first two times, he doesn't know that she is the one who wrote the letter that so impressed Jonah, but he too feels a sense of connection. It’s enough to jostle him out of his stupor. But he has no idea if he will ever see her again.

Ryan brings all of her usual charm to the role of Annie, though anyone who acted as she does in real life would be charitably considered erratic. She abuses her privileges as a journalist to essentially stalk Sam and Jonah “for a story”, flying all the way out to have a look at them for herself. But when Sam spots her looking and greets her from across a busy street, she panics and bolts.

Her obsession with Sam is all the more troubling because she is engaged. Walter (Bill Pullman) isn’t one of those stereotypical jerk boyfriends you so often find in movies like this. We’re meant to find him boring, and clearly there’s a certain zing lacking in their relationship. But Walter is a seriously nice guy who has done nothing whatsoever to drive his fiancée into the arms of a strange man. So while I confess that I do get caught up in the whimsy of this movie and catch myself feeling all fluttery, I can’t help feeling really sorry for poor Walter, who, while the woman he loves is dashing off to fulfill a cinematic fantasy atop the Empire State Building, is having the worst Valentine’s Day of his life.

And then there’s the fact that this big moment is preceded by Jonah, with the help of Jessica, securing a plane ticket to New York and somehow managing to make that journey all by himself and then spending the day atop the Empire State Building waiting for Annie to show up, as she proposed in her letter, to which he responded – except, since he has no idea what she looks like, he has to ask every woman in sight if she is Annie. It’s a colossally stupid and dangerous plot.

Four years later, Ryan and Hanks teamed up again for You’ve Got Mail, which was loosely based on the Jimmy Stewart classic Shop Around the Corner and features another unconventional romance, this time involving anonymous Internet pals who are falling in love online and don’t realize that they are rivals in real life. I really like that movie and the gradual development of the relationship at its heart. While I’m watching Sleepless in Seattle, I like it too. But when I stop to think it over, it’s no surprise to me why my dad walked out on it after ten minutes. “This is so contrived,” he complained. Although I am not immune to its charms, I can’t disagree.

“It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together,” Sam tells Dr. Fieldstone when she asks what was so special about Maggie. A million tiny little things that he doesn’t know about Annie. Do I believe that two people can be connected? Like soulmates? Yes. But once the warm fuzzies wear off, I don’t think that Sam and Annie are quite there.

Get Inspired By Two Dream-Chasers in Julie and Julia

The Oscars are right around the corner. I find myself woefully unprepared this year, but a couple weeks ago I managed to cross one more contender off my list. It’s a movie that I suspect will inspire many a delicious delicacy at Oscar parties across the country: Julie and Julia.

This film, written and directed by Nora Ephron and based on the book by Julie Powell, tracks the journeys of two women from frustrated obscurity to culinary greatness. Julie (Amy Adams) is an aspiring writer who spends her days as a receptionist fielding angry phone calls from New Yorkers still reeling from 9-11. She longs to do something different, something that will inflame her passions and give her something to look forward to after a difficult day. The solution? A blog.

The subject of the blog? Cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the magnum opus of kitchen virtuoso Julia Child (Meryl Streep). As Julie embraces this project, eventually winning oodles of followers and becoming so caught up in it that it begins to put stresses on her marriage, we see the struggles Julia herself went through as she took up French cooking and embarked on her cookbook project with two friends. This portion of the movie is based on her memoir My Life in France.

I’ve found Adams endearing in nearly every role she’s taken on, and while she doesn’t quite have the charm here that she does in such films as Enchanted and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, she seems like a likable enough young woman, and I can certainly relate to the desire to make a name for oneself as a writer through online efforts. At the same time, Julie has some negative characteristics, such as a tendency toward egotism, that are amplified by her endeavor, which makes her jocular husband Eric (Chris Messina) all the more appealing. A light-hearted and very supportive man, he truly is the glue holding Julie’s life together.

But even he pales in comparison to the gentlemanly, erudite, utterly devoted Paul Child, portrayed by the magnificent Stanley Tucci. This was a man with an impressive career of his own who never sought to keep his wife in the shadows, who always encouraged her to pursue her dreams. This was also a man with great integrity whose diplomatic views earned him one doozy of an interrogation by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ilk. It’s easy to understand how Julia would have blossomed so brilliantly when sharing a life with such a remarkable fellow.

The incomparable Streep, who starred in Doubt with Adams last year and The Devil Wears Prada with Tucci in 2006, has been getting plenty of raves for her performance, all of them well-deserved, as she completely immerses herself in the role, to the extent that I almost forget who the actress is behind the portrayal. Her voice, mannerisms, inflections, body language... All of it makes her a thoroughly convincing version of the famous chef, and because she is such a distinct character, there’s a lot of humor to be mined from her story. Julia’s joie de vivre comes across perfectly, and more often than not, her escapades bring a big smile to the face.

This is a beautifully shot film that makes one want to go to France and to attempt cooking French cuisine oneself. Rarely has a movie taken such care to make food look so enticing, so that one can almost smell it as it sits simmering on the table. Of course, there are a few disasters too, and a very funny scene involving an unfortunate excess of onions. But whatever is on the menu, Julie and Julia serves up a treat.

Mixed Nuts Is a Mixed Bag

I’ve been counting on Netflix to give me some new Christmas movies to watch this season. So far, the results have been less than inspiring; that continued last night when I watched Mixed Nuts, a 1994 Nora Ephron movie starring Steve Martin and Rita Wilson, along with Madeline Kahn, Adam Sandler, Anthony LaPaglia, Juliette Lewis, Rob Reiner and Liev Schreiber. It’s an A-list cast, but this cacophonous movie misses as often as it hits.

Martin is Philip, who’s in charge of a suicide hotline and is in danger of being evicted. He’s a decent guy, though he’s rather testy and completely oblivious to the fact that his earnest employee Catherine (Wilson) has a crush on him. His other employee, cranky Mrs. Munchnik (Kahn), is all too aware of it. Although she is snappish and rude, it’s easy to feel sorry for her because this particular Christmas brings her a string of abominably bad luck.

Then again, nobody in this merry band of misfits is having a great day. Street-smart fashionista Gracie (Lewis) is hugely pregnant and at odds with her volatile boyfriend, Felix (LaPaglia). Transvestite Chris (Schreiber) feels lonely and unappreciated. Eccentric ukulele player Louie (Sandler) just wants Catherine to slow down long enough to listen to the song he wrote for her. But in this movie, nobody stands still for long. The characters move swiftly from one crisis to another, getting to know each other better while trying to preserve their own sanity.

There are a lot of fun moments in the movie, from a recurring joke with a fruitcake baked by Mrs. Munchnik to the elegant dance performed by Chris and an obliging Philip. On the whole, though, while I found Martin’s character to be mostly sympathetic, he usually wasn’t particularly funny. Probably the most consistent source of humor is Kahn, who gives off a sort of nightmare mother-in-law vibe. Meanwhile, Wilson is irresistibly sweet as Catherine, who is idealistic and always anxious to help others, even as she bemoans her lack of romantic attachments.

There’s a certain tenderness in the explosive relationship between Gracie and Felix, but both are so unstable that it’s easy to imagine some type of disastrous outcome if their relationship continues. Chris is likable enough but feels out of place much of the time, while Louie, like most of Sandler’s characters, is endearing but incredibly annoying. And there’s often so much going on at once that it’s easy to miss what certain characters are saying.

Mixed Nuts is a decent holiday flick, but it’s not one to warm the cockles of your heart, and I doubt it’ll make you bust a gut either.