Sweet.  Funny.  Touching.  While You Were Sleeping has everything you're looking for in a romantic comedy, including world-class misunderstandings and a deeply likable couple. 

As our story opens, Lucy (Sandra Bullock) introduces herself in a narrative voice over.  A ticket-taker for the Chicago subway, Lucy is all alone in the world.  (Well, not entirely - she does have a cat.)  Her father died last year and her mother died when she was a baby.  She's single with no prospects, just a dream. 

There's this guy (Peter Gallagher).  Lucy sees him every day as he goes to work.  Handsome and well-dressed - she has a crush on him, even though they've never even exchanged a word. 

Everything changes on Christmas Day.  Guilted into working (everyone else has a family, her boss rather callously reminds her), she sees her dream man again.  Only this time he gets mugged and pushed onto the railroad tracks.

Lucy leaps onto the tracks and pulls the unconscious man to safety in the nick of time - the train barely misses them. 

And then at the hospital, she's not allowed into the hospital room - family only, she's told.  Staring through the window, Lucy mutters unhappily, "I was going to marry him."  She's overheard by a drama-loving nurse, so when the man's family arrives in an anxiety-fueled rush, the nurse pushes Lucy into the room.  This is his fiancee, she announces to them.  The family is shocked - they didn't know Peter was engaged!  But Lucy isn't just a secret fiancee, she's the woman who saved Peter's life - and before you know it, Lucy is enveloped in a group hug. 

Lucy does try to straighten out the misunderstanding, but everyone is talking at once and Mama starts having heart palpitations, she's had three heart attacks already, Lucy hears.  And somehow, what with one thing and another, Lucy can't quite manage to explain. 

And truthfully, she doesn't much want to.  It's the holidays and suddenly she's got a family!  And they're all so nice, and they like her and invite her to the house, so Lucy just sort of goes along with it.  Fortunately, Peter is in a coma. 

And then she meets Jack (Bill Pullman).  Jack is Peter's brother.  While Peter is the upscale brother, the lawyer with the fancy apartment, Jack is the salt of the earth brother, running the family's estate furniture business and making furniture as a sideline. 

The viewer sees it right away - Jack is a much better match for Lucy than Peter is!  As Lucy continues her interaction with the family, both Jack and Lucy come to the same realization.  They both keep quiet about their mutual attraction, Jack because he thinks Lucy is his brother's fiancee, and Lucy because of her load of guilt and the massive misunderstanding that's morphed into deception. 

For me, the funniest part of the movie is when Peter comes out of his coma and doesn't recognize Lucy.  By now the family is so mentally wedded to her that they are convinced that Peter has partial amnesia - and convince Peter of it! 

Of course it all works out in the end, but it's a fun journey to get to the happy ending.  Bullock and Pullman are perfectly cast, good-looking but not so stunning as to look implausible in a ticket booth or driving a furniture truck.

Warmth is the word I most associate with While You Were Sleeping.  And the writers get something that not all romance writers pay attention to - when you marry someone, you're marrying into a family.  Which is great if you like them.

Group hug, everybody!

Back to Joyce's Pix of the Flix

(For a different take on falling for your fiance's brother, check out Moonstruck.  For more romance complicated by coma, try Just Like Heaven.)