While You Were Sleeping is a wonderfully light romantic comedy with just the right amount of emotion at the end to warm your heart. Sandra Bullock stars as the awkward fare lady for the Chicago (!) commuter rail. Peter Gallagher is the guy of her dreams who she sees take the train every day but has never talked to. One fateful morning, he falls on the tracks and she rescues him from an oncoming train. As he lies in a coma at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (!), she gets mistaken as his fiancée by the staff and by his charmingly dysfunctional family. Through a series of very unrealistic but incredibly funny twists, she is forced to maintain her guise until he wakes up. But that is not the only twist! After spending Christmas with the family, she meets coma guy's brother, Bill Pullman, and soon falls in love with him.
Shot extensively (if not entirely) in Chicago, the cinematography is an absolute treasure for Chicago lovers. The shot compositions themselves aren't that great, but they do have an amazing backdrop at which I stared joyfully in every scene. But what is really awesome about this movie is seeing the hospital in which I'm going to be doing rotations come July. (Well, I guess that's not entirely true--Passavant Pavilion no longer exists and all the buildings I'm going to actually be working in were erected post-1999--but still!) The acting by all was pitch perfect, the characters were quirky before it was hip to be quirky, and the writing was fun while the dialogue was funny. This movie comes with a lot of twists and turns and explores the topics of love and family expertly. Despite my overly enthusiastic praise for movies set in Chicago, While You Were Sleeping is a true treasure for any movie fan and a really enjoyable movie. You won't be disappointed.IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114924/