An Affair to Remember

Faintly ridiculous, but oddly charming thanks to two incredibly talented and charismatic leads who could read the phonebook as a series of love letters and find a way to make it fresh, funny, romantic and compelling.

An Affair to Remember has a frothy and adorable first act which sees our soon-to-be lovers engaging in some sparring and romantic tension that's pure romantic-comedy mode before switching to achingly romantic melodrama. Eventually it turns into a weepie and has some serious problems towards the end of the second act/beginning of the third in which things sag and drag. The endless amount of wait time for them to reunite and declare their undying love gets to be too much. How many needless scenes of her group of students singing and dancing do I really need? How many times do they have to pass each other before she’ll finally reveal what prevented her from going to the Empire State Building do I have to endure? It can get to be a little much, a little purple prosaic in a way. To be blunter: exercise in tedium. It practically derails the film as a whole and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

When it all finally comes to an end, with Grant coming in to her apartment and discovering the truth, it’s an exhale you’re happy to have finally had. I don’t understand the enduring popularity of this movie, but I do know that it doesn’t deserve the fetishization that it got in Sleepless in Seattle, which proved that Tom Hanks might be likable enough but he’s no Cary Grant. The less said about Meg Ryan the better.