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While You Were Sleeping
List Price: Unknown [Buy now and save at Amazon]
The Movie:
"While You Were Sleeping" has all of the elements of a "hit" movie; it simply isn't anything that's going to help careers, though. It's light, it goes down easy, but it's something that's definitely forgettable. Like "The Net" and "Speed" it was one of star Sandra Bullock's more popular star vehicles before her career unfortunately took a turn down the wrong street with "Gun Shy", "In Love and War" and...well...you get the idea.
"Sleeping" takes a cute premise and stretches it thin, but it never manages to break. Bullock's charm and a few emotional scenes that do work carry the day. The film stars Bullock as Lucy, a ticket collector for the Chicago Transit Authority. Today, Lucy would probably be in different job since the trains now take reloadable electronic fare cards. Lucy has her sights set on a customer (Peter Gallagher). One day, he says hello, but she can't get it together to respond. Moments later, he falls onto the tracks after some muggers attack him. She saves him from an oncoming train, but he's in a coma.
When she comes to visit at the hospital, events (as with any film like this, cutesy ones), happen. Lucy finds that Peter(Gallagher)'s family now thinks that she's getting married to him. His brother Jack(Bill Pullman) doesn't quite believe the tale, though. The film works best when it keeps with the central theme that Lucy is a lonely woman who is just happy to be accepted into such a warm, loving family.
This wouldn't have worked as well as it does if Bullock hadn't been the lead actress. Her charm and appealing nature has been lost in her recent flops, but it's on full display here. Pullman walks through the role decently, and Gallagher gets an easy role - he's in a coma for much of the movie.
"While You Were Sleeping" is a cute, although forgettable movie. It works well, and certainly could have been a lot worse had the actors here not had been involved.
The DVD
VIDEO: "While You Were Sleeping" gets a watchable, if consistently flawed presentation on this early, non-anamorphic DVD from Disney. Sharpness is consistently fair; adequate, but certainly could have been better. Detail is good, but not great.
The biggest problem of quite a few that the disc faces is print flaws. There are periods where the image seems free of them, but soon enough they return in the form of tiny marks, or occasionally some more moderate wear. There's also some slight graininess at times. Pixelation and slight shimmer are apparent, although only in light amounts.
The Chicago exterior shots seem more natural looking, and these images seem slightly more pleasantly rendered than many of the interior scenes. When this picture manages to look good, it's enjoyable. If it had been anamorphic, it would have probably been really much stronger and consistent. Where the picture is solid are the colors, which are rich and well-saturated, with no problems. Black level is good, and flesh tones seem fairly natural.
Again, an anamorphic transfer would have gone to improving the flaws that do arise here. This is watchable, but certainly problematic at times.
SOUND: As the great Homer Simpson might say, "D'oh!" When I first took the DVD out, I was suprised to see that it was only in Dolby 2.0. I would certainly think that this, although a few years in age now, was presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 in theaters. Looking up the film in the IMDB, I was right.(I like when that happens occasionally). This is essentially a stereo soundtrack - no surround use.
Moving on from that dissapointment, I'll move on to the actual quality of the soundtrack. Which is also a dissapointment. The audio quality is not pleasing, sounding thin at times, although the musical score does manage to sound rather pleasant. Dialogue is clear and fairly easily understood. I'd say this was an early mistake from the studio, but they have done similar things again on films such as "She's All That".
MENUS:: Fairly uninteresting main menus, just recycling the cover art for the main menu and some minor film-themed images are used to make up the sub-menus.
EXTRAS: The trailer.
Final Thoughts: The film itself isn't bad, but the picture quality could definitely stand to be improved, and the fact that the film's original soundtrack isn't included is really a dissapointment.
"While You Were Sleeping" has all of the elements of a "hit" movie; it simply isn't anything that's going to help careers, though. It's light, it goes down easy, but it's something that's definitely forgettable. Like "The Net" and "Speed" it was one of star Sandra Bullock's more popular star vehicles before her career unfortunately took a turn down the wrong street with "Gun Shy", "In Love and War" and...well...you get the idea.
"Sleeping" takes a cute premise and stretches it thin, but it never manages to break. Bullock's charm and a few emotional scenes that do work carry the day. The film stars Bullock as Lucy, a ticket collector for the Chicago Transit Authority. Today, Lucy would probably be in different job since the trains now take reloadable electronic fare cards. Lucy has her sights set on a customer (Peter Gallagher). One day, he says hello, but she can't get it together to respond. Moments later, he falls onto the tracks after some muggers attack him. She saves him from an oncoming train, but he's in a coma.
When she comes to visit at the hospital, events (as with any film like this, cutesy ones), happen. Lucy finds that Peter(Gallagher)'s family now thinks that she's getting married to him. His brother Jack(Bill Pullman) doesn't quite believe the tale, though. The film works best when it keeps with the central theme that Lucy is a lonely woman who is just happy to be accepted into such a warm, loving family.
This wouldn't have worked as well as it does if Bullock hadn't been the lead actress. Her charm and appealing nature has been lost in her recent flops, but it's on full display here. Pullman walks through the role decently, and Gallagher gets an easy role - he's in a coma for much of the movie.
"While You Were Sleeping" is a cute, although forgettable movie. It works well, and certainly could have been a lot worse had the actors here not had been involved.
The DVD
VIDEO: "While You Were Sleeping" gets a watchable, if consistently flawed presentation on this early, non-anamorphic DVD from Disney. Sharpness is consistently fair; adequate, but certainly could have been better. Detail is good, but not great.
The biggest problem of quite a few that the disc faces is print flaws. There are periods where the image seems free of them, but soon enough they return in the form of tiny marks, or occasionally some more moderate wear. There's also some slight graininess at times. Pixelation and slight shimmer are apparent, although only in light amounts.
The Chicago exterior shots seem more natural looking, and these images seem slightly more pleasantly rendered than many of the interior scenes. When this picture manages to look good, it's enjoyable. If it had been anamorphic, it would have probably been really much stronger and consistent. Where the picture is solid are the colors, which are rich and well-saturated, with no problems. Black level is good, and flesh tones seem fairly natural.
Again, an anamorphic transfer would have gone to improving the flaws that do arise here. This is watchable, but certainly problematic at times.
SOUND: As the great Homer Simpson might say, "D'oh!" When I first took the DVD out, I was suprised to see that it was only in Dolby 2.0. I would certainly think that this, although a few years in age now, was presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 in theaters. Looking up the film in the IMDB, I was right.(I like when that happens occasionally). This is essentially a stereo soundtrack - no surround use.
Moving on from that dissapointment, I'll move on to the actual quality of the soundtrack. Which is also a dissapointment. The audio quality is not pleasing, sounding thin at times, although the musical score does manage to sound rather pleasant. Dialogue is clear and fairly easily understood. I'd say this was an early mistake from the studio, but they have done similar things again on films such as "She's All That".
MENUS:: Fairly uninteresting main menus, just recycling the cover art for the main menu and some minor film-themed images are used to make up the sub-menus.
EXTRAS: The trailer.
Final Thoughts: The film itself isn't bad, but the picture quality could definitely stand to be improved, and the fact that the film's original soundtrack isn't included is really a dissapointment.
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