Pendant ton sommeil

Oh Sandra, only you could trick your way into a family and make me still fall in love with you. Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock have such good chemistry in this film, I am surprised they never acted in anything else together. And to think this movie was almost called "Coma Guy."

It's a shame that this movie has such a low rating at IMDb, because it deserves better.

"While You Were Sleeping" is the kind of film that must be hard to pull off, because there aren't many of them: solid, well-written and consistently funny romantic comedies.

Sandra Bullock exudes buckets of charm and a whopper of a comic presence as the heroine of this particular romance. She ably carries the movie, even when surrounded by veterans like Jack Warden, Peter Boyle and Glynis Johns.

Those who are familiar with Chicago will have fun with this film, as that's where it was filmed, and you could make a game out of spotting the inconsistencies in the movie if you actually know the city it's set in.

A fun movie to pop in here and there during the holiday season.

Grade: A

Lucy (Sandra Bullock) is a train token taker without a family. She pines for frequent commuter Peter (Peter Gallagher), but never speaks to him. Then on Christmas, Peter gets pushed off the platform, and she rescues him. In the hospital, the family mistakes her for his fiancée. While he's in a coma, she and his brother Jack (Bill Pullman) slowly falls for each other.

This is a perfectly harmless Sandra Bullock rom-com, and she's so great at it. She can make any preposterous situations work. This movie is about Bullock's vulnerable charm. The biggest problem is that Bill Pullman doesn't get in the movie until almost 30 minutes in. They need more time together to develop the chemistry. I don't know why he doesn't get in right from the start.

This was the picture which proved things could be all about Sandra Bullock. "Speed" - one year earlier - showed this. This picture proved it. A lot of people nowadays make fun of a typical Bullock picture and speak of her as negligible in this day and age. They probably forget or were never aware that she was hailed as America's new sweetheart back in '95 and it was no idle chatter. There are very few actresses who can carry a picture on their own slight shoulders - I mean, really make it a success. Sure, Bill Pullman helped, but this really was Sandra all the way, in a sappy, soapy, cliché-ridden slight story of sudden romance usually very hard to buy into. But because Sandra is there on the screen throughout nearly every frame, it all works out, and you're rooting for her happiness in the final few minutes even knowing very well what is about to happen. It's like you've seen it all before, but Sandra makes you want to see it again. We are all very fortunate, those of us who have seen this story, that it was Sandra in the central role and not someone like (shudder) Demi Moore. And if a guy is really fortunate, he may meet someone like Sandra in real life.

This is one of those movies where she waits for me to get emotional. But I had steel resolve, holding back any tears or emotion. Sandy Bullock, you won't break me. You won't.