While she was in six different movies in 1993, Sandra Bullock first broke through as a movie star in Speed, in the summer of 1994, which everyone remembers as a high-octane action thriller, but also boasted a pretty convicing romance plot between Bullock and Keanu Reeves.
So the following year, Bullock starred in a full-on rom-com, While You Were Sleeping, which ended up a huge hit, and set up Bullock for decades of movie stardom, and has continued to star in romcoms up to The Lost City, in 2022.
While You Were You Sleeping arrived in April of 1995, 30 years ago next week.
What’s so fascinating about the film is that the lead is so charming that we forgive, almost without even thinking about it, that she spends the bulk of the film lying to a grieving family. And family pretty easily forgives her too.
In a movie like Dear Evan Hansen, that conceit fails, because the Evan Hansen character isn’t very good at being charming. While You Were You Sleeping, though, didn’t have that problem.
Bullock’s character, Lucy, is a lonely single lady who works for the Chicago Transit Authority. There aren’t many subway coin collectors in real life who look like Sandra Bullock, but I digress.
Lucy harbors a crush on a man named Peter who she regularly sees in the station, played by Peter Gallagher at peak handsomeness, but they have no interaction, until one day he’s pushed onto the tracks, and she saves his life.
Taking a comatose Peter to the hospital, Lucy is mistaken for his fiancee, and is identified as such when Peter’s large family arrives. And because the movie would be over after 15 minutes if she cleared the air, she instead keeps up the ruse for much longer.
There are mitigating factors, though, beyond the charm- the grandmother has a heart condition, and the shock could kill her. Also, Lucy’s parents are deceased, she has no family, and she’s comforted when she’s suddenly embraced this new family, even if by dishonest purposes. (They’re playing by a parade of great character actors- Peter Boyle as the dad, Micole Mercurio as the mom, Glynis Johns as the grandmother, and Jack Warden as Peter’s godfather, the one member of the family who sees through the ruse immediately.)
