When Harry Met Sally

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Amazon.com

Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story (very much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal’s unstoppable charm made it something really special. Crystal and Meg Ryan play longtime platonic friends who keep dancing around their deeper feelings for one another, and Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are their respective pals who fall in love and get married. Ryan doesn’t get a lot of funny material, but her performance is typically alive and intuitive, and she more than holds her own with Crystal’s comic motor mouth and sweet sentimentality. Reiner is on comfortable ground, liberated from the burden of making serious statements in the lead-footed manner of subsequent features. —Tom Keogh

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Highly influential, When Harry Met Sally revitalised (in 1988) the moribund romantic comedy genre, made a superstar of Meg Ryan, and in two minutes of heavy breathing gave cinema one of its most memorable scenes. Set over 12 years in New York, young professionals Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) go from meeting to becoming friends to, well—this is a romantic comedy. Benefiting from an observant and witty script by Nora Ephron, it also offers insight into the differences between men and women. More importantly it’s very funny, though the most hilarious scene is also the least believable: Sally is really too conventional to do that in a crowded restaurant. Knowingly modern, the picture’s snappy one liners, neurotic honesty and straight-to-camera interludes are in the tradition of Woody Allen’s New York Jewish humour, a prime example being Annie Hall (1976), while the inspired use of standards not only made a star of Harry Connick Jnr. but started a trend developed in Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000). Perfectly played, with excellent support from Carrie Fisher, When Harry Met Sally is the archetypal modern romantic comedy. —Gary S Dalkin

Barnes and Noble

Usually the passage of many years—even decades—is required before a popular film achieves the designation of “classic,” but Rob Reiner’s charming and witty romantic comedy attained that lofty status much sooner than most. Certainly it’s best remembered for the hilarious scene, set in a New York delicatessen, in which preternaturally perky Meg Ryan loudly simulates an orgasm for skeptical Billy Crystal—much to the amusement of a nearby female patron (played by Reiner’s mother), who instructs the waiter, “I’ll have what she’s having!” That’s just one great line among many penned by Nora Ephron, whose episodic plot initially introduces Crystal and Ryan as friends who vow to resist sexual attraction to preserve the nature of their unique relationship. The story spans many years and even evokes suspense by delaying what many viewers believe should be inevitable. Will they or won’t they? The sparkling script, airy direction, irresistibly cute characters, and New York settings jell perfectly, making When Harry Met Sally one of contemporary cinema’s funniest romantic gems. The new wide-screen Special Edition DVD includes seven minutes of never-before-seen footage, commentary by Reiner, Ephron, Crystal, and Carrie Fisher, the original theatrical trailer, and a music video by Harry Connick, Jr. Ed Hulse