While You Were Sleeping? Really? What a bloody awful title for a rom-com. It sounds like some sinister, stalker Kubrick movie. Honestly, it sounds like Eyes Wide Shut. Once you know the story, it is a relevant title… but wow, they should have named it something else.
While You Were Sleeping is a Sandra Bullock jaunt from 1995 that actually has quite an interesting premise. Bullock plays a ticket officer at a train station who has a pretty sad, single life. One day however, she sees the man of her dreams in a spot of bother when he falls onto the train tracks. Adrenaline pumping, she dives onto the tracks and saves his life, but the guy falls into a coma. One thing leads to another and she suddenly find herself in a little pickle: his entire family think that she’s his fiance. From there, it only gets worse: she falls in love with his brother. Uh oh.
Firstly, who doesn’t love Sandra Bullock? And who doesn’t love screen LEGEND Glynis Johns?! The entire cast is chosen so well here, and even if you’re not a huge rom-com fan, you’ll find yourself actually caring about them. Every single character screams feel-good family film, and that’s just what you want when you come to this movie. (That’s if you ignore the dodgy title, obviously.)
Sure, this is just your average mid-nineties romcom fodder, but who cares? It’s funny and it’s cute. Not exactly thrilling from start to finish but still, it’s definitely one that the young adults of today will most likely never have even heard of that you can sit down and enjoy just as much as they will. It’s also as dialogue-heavy as you’d expect from this type of movie, but at least the characters are well acted and fully realised so that you don’t lose interest.
Although I said that the premise was really quite interesting, the plot is super obvious from the get go and there are parts (especially the last act) that run on for way too long. However, for the most part it’s easy to lose yourself in the story – again, it’s mostly because of the insane likeability of the characters.
A technical achievement? No. What While You Were Sleeping is is the definition of a feel good movie. So it isn’t anything special or outstanding, but we all need a little bit more feel good right now. There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.
While You Were Sleeping is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK.
TQR Category Ratings:
Performance: 
Cinematography:
Soundtrack:
Costume & Set Design:
Plot:
Overall Enjoyability Rating:
The Quayside Review 