GALLERY
BUY: DVD
RELEASED: 25 June 1993
CAST
Dr Marcia Fieldstone … Caroline Aaron
Irene Reed … Frances Conroy
Greg … Victor Garber
Sam Baldwin … Tom Hanks
Jessica … Gaby Hoffman
Jonah Baldwin … Ross Malinger
Keith … Tom McGowan
Becky … Rosie O’Donnell
Cliff Reed … Kevin O’Morrison
Dennis Reed … David Hyde Pierce
Walter … Bill Pullman
Barbara Reed … Le Clanché du Rand
Jay … Rob Reiner
Annie Reed … Meg Ryan
Harold Reed … Tom Tammi
Uncle Milton … Calvin Trillin
Suzy … Rita Wilson
SYNOPSIS
A gentle Norah Ephron romcom. Eight-year-old Jonah (Malinger), worried about his grieving dad, rings a radio call-in show to find him a new wife. Meg Ryan, listening from the other side of the country, falls for Tom Hanks, thus proving that love transcends silly things like actually having met the other person.
Okay, so it shamelessly plagiarises An Affair To Remember. Meg Ryan is quite the stalker. And Tom Hanks doesn’t actually break up with that other woman he’s going out with. But it’s all good, clean fun.
DAVID’S ROLE
Blink and you’ll miss it! David plays Dennis Reed, Meg Ryan’s older brother. We don’t learn a whole lot about him, other than that he’s a professor at Johns Hopkins University and is married to someone called Betsy. But none of that really matters because he’s just so darn young and handsome in this one! There’s also some nice, albeit inadvertent Frasier foreshadowing with Dennis’s comment about how much it rains in Seattle.
BEST BITS
- Dennis standing up at the dinner table to propose a toast to Meg Ryan on her impending nuptials to Bill Pullman, who she clearly isn’t going to end up marrying.
- Dennis furrowing his brow and playing absentmindedly with his baton as Meg Ryan rambles on endlessly during the office scene.
- Dennis’s definition of attraction. “Two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.” Classic Niles-ism!
- Dennis’s hair. It really is very nice.
BEST LINES
ANNIE: Why did you get married? Was it all trumpets and fireworks?
DENNIS: I got married because Betsy said we had to break up or get married … so we got married.
“Annie, when you’re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.”
DVD EXTRAS
The 10th Anniversary edition (available from the store) has a featurette called Love In the Movies and a Celine Dion music video. Oh joy.
We’re also treated to a director’s commentary by Nora Ephron which is good, except she spends David’s big scene talking about the significance of the door to Dennis’s office. Bah!
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