It's really hard to 'judge' a movie with fresh eyes when it's a remake of an older movie. Really hard not to compare characters and plot and writing and chemistry between protagonists.
This is a very cheap knock-off of While You were Sleeping with Sandra Bullock and Bill Pullman.
Spoiler alert unless you've seen that movie then my review isn't spoiling anything new.
I feel like the producer had an idea to do a remake and wanted to update it a bit, but I mean 1995 is a long time ago, so maybe they forgot the details of WYWS, so they piece mealed their script together with a bunch of loopholes.
And he/she should have done the exact same script or gone in a completely different direction. You can't pick a couple of elements and then stick them together and expect it not to be a choppy disconnected mess.
In WYWS, Lucy and Peter had never even spoken to each other so he didn't know she existed. In this, J and T knew each other online at least for a year.
Also in WYWS, the family knew that Peter was engaged, they just had never met the fiancee. This family is written exactly the same as the og family, gregarious, friendly, loud, and supposedly close to their son (unlike in the og movie) so there's no way A) they wouldn't even know he was married, and B)wouldn't interrogate Tenley for wedding photos or other details.
Everett, the best buddy since K school, didn't know either. Not really plausible. In the og movie, the 2 dudes were actual brothers but they weren't really close because Peter was a corporate suit and disconnected from his family and their 'small town vibe'.
Then there are little idiosyncrasies like Tenley's complicated relationship with her mom she mentions at the beginning but that story line is ignored completely so there was no point in even mentioning it.
The other disaster is Tenley and Everett having no real chemistry- again I'm comparing to Bullock and Pullman in WYWS, those 2 were completely in sync.
There were a lot of little things thrown in for filler, that didn't do the plot any favours, the sister in theater, the sister with the secret boyfriend. They just seemed like the writer went to the detail store and bought a bunch of random details to throw into the movie to fill it out.
My last beef is with Tenley, I'm not pushing to stereotype green thumbed people, but she works in a garden all day, and none of her clothes were appropriate, all I ever saw her in were dresses and blouses and dress shoes. Not saying she had to be in coveralls the whole movie, but certainly any realism for such a role would have put her in jeans or khakis and work boots etc suitable to a job surrounded by soil.
Lastly, when the truth finally comes out and Everett gives her his how dare you speech he calls it 'his family'. It is not 'his' family. He was introduced as Jared's best friend and while he mentioned a few times to her they were joined at the hip, he never went to the hospital much, in fact the whole family didn't seem sincerely stressed that their son was in a coma. in WYWS the whole family was visiting Peter in the hospital constantly, the brother sat with him often and talked to him and played cards etc. Never saw Everett in there once except for the beginning scene with he has to be there for when Tenley shows up so they can do the who are you what are you doing here scene.
All in all, don't waste your time with this. Go find the og, bullock and Pullman did a way better job in While you Were Sleeping.
13 out of 17 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink