#harses

—Sleepless in Seattle (dir. Nora Ephron), 1993.

(PG, 1hr 45m, Comedy/Drama/Romance, 1993)

* Unless otherwise noted, all movie stats come from IMDb.

If you’re making a piece of toast, there is little you can do wrong. Some ingredients, however, turn a steady into a stunner. Likewise, the only movie part Tom Hanks hasn’t played is a bad one. Adding Meg Ryan to the mix always ensures something sweet, special, and certain to melt your heart.

Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is a widower (trust me, I looked it up, widow is the woman) who, coping with grief, leaves town for Seattle with his son Jonah (Ross Malinger). Jonah, coping with his sleepless father, dials a late-night radio love expert, desperate to see his father happy again. Women across America fall in love with the fractured but strong father Jonah describes on the air, including Annie Reed (Meg Ryan). But oh – Annie is engaged! And to that rare species of man allergic to all of God’s green earth.

Like any fantasy-driven romance, Hanks and Ryan are not in the same state. In fact, they don’t touch the same ocean. But ain’t no mountain high enough, friends, for Jonah to rendezvous across the Rockies to force his dad to chase him to the Empire State Building where he will meet Annie, the woman he’s sure will be the best mother and wife of all the gentlewomen callers. But I’m not going to tell you what happens in this movie!

The most recent time I watched this movie, my friends The Geologist and Marty (not her real name) were over. Having never seen a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan double-team as a cinema dream, it was my obligation as friend to open the door. At one point, one of my doofus friends stops the movie instead of pausing it, making us start the movie entirely over, and there was no scene selection option, so we had to fast-forward from the very beginning, so the other friend and I groaned really loudly so she felt bad. In one scene, Meg Ryan listens to Christmas tunes on the radio, and sings “horses horses horses horses,” but sped up, it sounds like “harsesharsesharsesharses.” You would laugh too if you weren’t expecting it.

Sleepless in Seattle is the realization of your childhood daydream about calling in to late-night radio shows and having your problems solved by a far-removed woman with a soothing voice and catchy jingle. I would not be surprised if the radio host in the movie were based off Delilah, the one-name-only queen of pairing your hand in life with the perfect song who always has the silkiest voice on air. Delilah, if you’re out there, I adopted you as my mother when I was in the third grade via my pink Hello Kitty boom box.

While the movie is a story of love lost and won, the most beautiful relationship here is between Hanks and his son. No tragedy ought to be strong enough to break a family, for that is where strength comes from; with each other, the two men find it within themselves to keep going.

Fun finds! Also note bountiful allusion, obvious and subtle, to the Cary Grant melodrama An Affair to Remember. Before Annie, Hanks dates a woman whose laugh is like Elmer Fudd stuck on a juicer. The txtspeak featured in the dialogue is representative of mass unfamiliarity with the burgeoning Internet, now so quickly quaint anachronisms in 2016. Hopefully this means we will regain the ability to “can even” within another decade.

(hah-ar-suh-is)

English: Horses

Definitions: (noun) A large, solid-hoofed animal, used for carrying or pulling loads, for riding, and for racing.

Example: Bring the harses back to the bern after dinner.