25 Days: WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING

Holidays are time for spending with your family, but for some lonely ticket booth ladies, sometimes your secret crush's family will have to do:
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING    (ROMANTIC-COMEDY, 1995)
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
Starring Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman, Peter Gallagher, Jack Warden, Michael Rispoli, Peter Boyle, Glynis Johns, Ally Walker
PG for some language.
Naughty or Nice?: Nice
Religious or Secular?: Some of both
Cynical or Sentimental?: Very Sentimental
Holiday Relations: Christmas is Incidental to the Plot
OVERALL: 2.5 out of 4

There really isn't anything original about WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.  The lonely, pathetic, frumpy hottie falls in love with a stranger, falls in with his loving but eccentric family and realizes that she loves another.  Whoop-dee-doo.  It's surprisingly watchable though, packed full of endearing, feel-good, warm fuzziness. 
Sandra Bullock, in one of her earlier leading roles, stars as Lucy Moderatz, the token booth lady for the Chicago Transit Authority.  With her both of her parents passed on and no known family to call her own, she's the stereotypical lonely lady who lives with her cat.  The highlight of her day is seeing Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher), a handsome commuter, who rushes past her on his way to the train every day , never stopping to notice Lucy, let alone get to know her.  One Christmas Day, though, Peter takes a fall onto the tracks in the way of an oncoming train, and Lucy manages to pull his unconscious body to safety.  In a coma, Peter is taken to the hospital along with Lucy, and due to a series of misunderstandings, Peter's family assumes that Lucy is Peter's fiancee.  Lucy is too nervous to tell them otherwise, because Peter's grandmother has a delicate heart and the whole situation is a bit too fragile.  The Callaghans quickly welcome her into their family though, so she's guilt-ridden by her secret, which their neighbor and Peter's godfather, Saul (Jack Warden), becomes her sole confidant, and advises her to maintain the secret for the time being.  Naturally, another man is soon introduced into the equation in the form of Peter's younger brother, Jack (Bill Pullman), who is skeptical of her story, but becomes infatuated with her, himself.  As Lucy spends the holidays with the wacky Callaghan clan, she comes to feel like part of the family herself, but the truth will have to come out eventually, and Lucy will be forced to choose between Peter or Jack.
There are no surprises in WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING, except that the film actually gets by despite its blatant and dependent use of formula.  It isn't hard at all to guess how it all ends, and each character fills in their part of the story like you've seen a dozen times over at least.  What really counts in this film is Bullock, who anchors the film as a hugely appealing, endearing lead, even if no one would be believe that she'd be the "frumpy", lonely cat lady. 
Even as it ticks off each and every rom-com cliche like a check list (romantic triangle, mismatched identities, the grubby would-be suitor, jokes about damaged/deformed male genitalia), it's just a movie that's too darn happy to not enjoy, at least a little bit.