However, Lucy acknowledges that she had the power to end this lie and doesn’t. They both implicate her further in this exhaustive lie, by advising her to spare Grandma’s feelings. She has terrible advice giving co-conspirators in Jerry, her boss, and Saul, a family friend. She’s not completely alone in her exploits either, regardless of how she actually perceives her loneliness. The entire plot and events that follow are dependent entirely on Lucy’s willingness to jump onto train tracks and save a man’s life. Unlike many rom-com leads, Lucy is an active part of the plot, which helps ground the comedy and running gags throughout the movie. Lucy is also incredibly self-sacrificing, taking one for the team by working holidays. However, in this movie, these little quirks and details work, and it is great. She has an EXTENSIVE sweater collection, which may be a Chicago thing, but either way I am very jealous and this movie might have a lot to do with my current fashion sense. Despite being a regular, the hot dog cart guy never remembers her order. She carries her passport everywhere because it’s an aspirational motivator. She crashes a tree into her building manager’s apartment because she was pulling up through the window. On paper, these quirks sound terrible: She carries gifts in her sleeves for her building manager. Her quirks are perfect because of Sandra Bullock’s perfect ability to mix humor, charm, neurosis and sarcasm in a way that come across as believable and relatable instead of cloying and aggravating. Yes, she also ends the movie narrating the story, to some mystery audience, I guess us the home viewers, but that’s weird and breaks the fourth wall in a confusing way that makes me ask a lot of existential questions. There is a voice-over narration in the beginning explaining her sad childhood, in her weird funny, awkward Sandra Bullock way. Her mother died when she was young, and she quit school to tend to her sick father, who died soon thereafter, so she meets the quota of tragic backstory. She has perfectly rosy cheeks, and a wide welcoming smile and perfect eyebrows, and a mess of “mousy” brown hair that is always disarmingly perfect. If there was a formula for perfect rom-com heroine that is often imitated and never replicated, it would be Lucy. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the greatness of this movie, by breaking down its two central elements, the comedy and the romance. That description also perfectly chooses the roles we know all of those people for, except since I never watched The O.C., my knowledge for Peter Gallagher comes entirely from Center Stage. While this aptly and exuberantly describes the film (so many exclamation points!), it leaves out the crucial detail that is Lucy’s amazing sweater collection, which I will examine further later on. But when she saves his life after he’s been mugged and fallen into a coma, his hilarious offbeat family mistakes her for his fiancee! Soon, the mix-ups escalate as Lucy fabricates a life between herself and a man she’s never met! And when Lucy falls for his charming brother (Bill Pullman – Independence Day) the situation really gets uproarious - as she’s forced to make a choice between the two! As Lucy, a lonely subway worker, she becomes smitten with a handsome stranger (Peter Gallagher – T.V.’s The O.C.). You’ll fall in love with While You Were Sleeping, the hit romantic comedy that woke everyone up to the adorable Sandra Bullock ( Speed, Miss Congeniality). The best summary of the movie is this amazing recap on the DVD back cover: I love it so much because it is so high concept and yet also not. Stream it, download it, go to Best Buy and purchase it, whatever. For those unfamiliar with While You Were Sleeping, you need to find a copy it of it now. I have no idea about her star power in 1995, and frankly I’m not that interested in it, because all that mattered to me was the humor and the sweaters. (Yes, I will repeat this phrase too many times.) Now admittedly, I watched this when I was a kid, most likely on TV, so my entire understanding of the movie is that it was funny and Sandra Bullock is amazing. I cannot even begin to explain how much I love While You Were Sleeping. Because the most inspiring fashion icon of my life is ’90s Sandra Bullock.
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