While You Were Sleeping

This is the love story of Lucy (Sandra Bullock) and Peter (Peter Gallagher). It's also the love story of Lucy and Jack (Bill Pullman), Peter's brother. Actually, it's the love story of Lucy and Peter's entire family. Oh, and Ashley (Ally Walker) is thrown into the mix as Peter's actual fiancée.

The first man that Lucy ever loved was her father, who passed on his own love of travel and adventure to his young daughter. He also taught her about love through the stories he would tell about himself and Lucy's mother, who passed away when she was far too young to remember.

It was her father's stories that convinced Lucy that she was to have the most epic of romances, but it was his death that closed her off to the rest of the world. She found herself instead fantasizing about a man who came through her booth every morning at the subway station. That man was Peter, and she was struck by his handsomeness, his willingness to help elderly women onto the subway, and the fact that he would give up his seat on the train every morning to someone else had convinced her that he was the perfect man.

After being forced to work on Christmas Eve, due to the fact that she's the only one without any family to see, she finds herself confronted by Peter, who wishes her a merry Christmas. She freezes, unable to speak to him, but goes through all of the things she should have said, like "nice coat," and "merry Christmas to you, too," as well as "you're beautiful, I love you," and "will you marry me?" It's only when she's forced to jump onto the train tracks to save Peter's life that she has the chance to speak to him, and she almost manages to convince herself that, by saving the life of the object of her obsession, she will be able to make him fall in love with her.

Through a series of misunderstandings, Peter's family comes to believe that Lucy is Peter's fiancée. She comes to believe that the family needs Lucy to feel as though they haven't lost Peter, and ends up spending the holidays with them. Through the family she learns many things about how heroic and noble Peter was, and it comes to the point that she's considered a part of the family.

Lucy eventually meets Peter's brother, who is convinced that she's not who she says she is, but falls so madly in love with her that it doesn't matter. Jack is torn between his feelings for Lucy, his loyalty to his family, and his protectiveness of his brother. After Lucy manages to convince Jack that she is who she claims to be, he grows more concerned over her well-being, to the point that he even refuses to let her drink because he thinks she might be pregnant.

Lucy and Jack bond during a walk in the snow, talking about their families and their plans for the future, and become good friends. But it's as they struggle together on the icy path, holding each other closely in their fight against gravity, that Lucy falls in love with Jack.

As Jack grows ever-infatuated with Lucy, his jealousy toward his brother grows more and more, and when Peter finally wakes up, the brothers discuss how Lucy is the perfect woman. Peter has grown convinced that he needs to force himself to fall in love with Lucy because she can make him a better person, but it's Jack that can actually verbalize his feelings for the woman because, unlike his brother, he has actually gotten to know her.

Midway through the action we're introduced to Ashley, Peter's fiancée, who has just returned from a trip across the globe. She's leading the life that Lucy has always desperately wanted, and it's a little strange to me that the two characters never interact with one another. We learn that Ashley is feared by most everyone she comes into contact with, and she turns out to be a vile human being with a terrible temper. We briefly wonder how she managed to snag Peter, but, seeing as he proposed to her knowing that she was already married, we see that he's not quite the golden child that we've been led to believe.

Lucy eventually breaks things off with Peter after realizing that she's deeply in love with his brother, and retreats back to her quiet life. Jack follows her, marries her, and finally takes her on the trip around the world that her father never could.

Lucy and Peter would never have worked out as a couple. Though she was very convinced that it was love at first sight, and thought that he was a great man, throughout the film we're shown that he's a bit shadier than his family knows. He not only proposed to a married woman earlier in the film, but also was using Lucy only as a means to make himself a better person. He wasn't focused on Lucy's happiness, just his own.

Lucy and Jack make much more sense as a couple. They became good friends, he not only listened to what she wanted, but retained the information to make her happy later on. For Jack it really was love at first sight, and he is more than happy to do whatever it takes to make Lucy just as happy as she makes him.

However, I would like to point out that I don't for one second believe that Sandra Bullock is so desperate for companionship that she can't find so much as a single date. If that's the case she can give me her number.