Modern Romance

TITLE: SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE

DIRECTOR: NORA EPHRON

WRITERS: NORA EPHRON, DAVID S. WARD AND JEFF ARCH

THE BOTTOM LINE: This comedy of long-distance love is too long and too distant.

Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) is an architect in Seattle, a recent widower unable to overcome his bereavement. Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) is a no-nonsense newspaperwoman in Baltimore, about to settle for a marriage more convenient than stirring.

They don't meet cute. As a matter of fact, they don't meet at all until the end of the movie. She hears him on a radio shrink's call-in program, into which he's been plugged...