Sleepless in Seattle

A timely romantic reissue for Nora Ephron’s wildly successful 1993 romcom in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan play soulmates divided by geography, relationships and the fact that they don’t know each other. He plays Seattle-based Sam, the widowed architect whose sass-talking eight-year-old son (Ross Malinger) phones a radio talk show to put out a nationwide call for a new mom. She’s Baltimore journalist Annie, who puts her marriage to not-quite-perfect Walter (Bill Pullman) on ice when she falls in love with the voice on the air. It’s deeply sentimental and neither as insightful nor outright funny as Ephron and Ryan’s prior collaboration ‘When Harry Met Sally’. Its irksome soundtrack must have been a boon to the ‘naff covers of jazz standards’ industry. But with Hanks essaying his best Jimmy Stewart, Ryan at her most dewy-eyed, a sparkling array of supporting players and a handful of snappy dialogue scenes (the ‘I cried at “The Dirty Dozen” ’ conversation is pure gold), it’s infuriatingly irresistible.