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When Harry Met Sally... Customer Reviews (31 - 33 of 61 Reviews)

One of the brightest and best
"When Harry Met Sally" is one of the brightest and best romantic comedies ever made. The story of the friendship between Harry and Sally crackles with wit and insight into the differences between men and women and the way those differences affect relationships, sex, and commitment.

It is a tribute to the quality and realism of Nora Ephron's fine, funny script that we come to identify with and care so much about Harry (played by Billy Crystal), Sally (played by Meg Ryan), Marie (Sally's best friend played by Carrie Fisher), and Jess (Harry's best pal portrayed by Bruno Kirby). These are four urban upwardly mobile young people who excel in their professions but who are tentative in their relationships with the opposite sex. We follow these four characters over a decade as they grow as people and mature in their relationships.

Rob Reiner's assured direction keeps the story moving along at a lively pace. There are no dull moments in this movie. And the gifted, urbane cast of Crystal, Ryan, Kirby, and Fisher are exceptionally good. These intriguing, facile actors bring exquisite charm, humor, pathos, and intelligence to their roles. It's an ideal cast.

So as surely as Harry realizes that he's in love with Sally, you'll fall head over heels for "When Harry Met Sally". It's a perfect, perceptive marvel of romantic comedy.

It's like looking for a planet in a sea of stars
Do me a favor this weekend? Go down to the local bookstore, you know the one just around the corner. There, I want you to look for a book that will explain to me, in undeniable detail, the mechanics of how and why two people fall in love. Sure, you'll find plenty of books on romance, courtship, dating dos and don'ts, as well as a paperback or two on the differences between men and women. But, chances are you won't find what you're looking for. Why? The reason is because humanity probably knows volumes more about finding a planet next to a faraway star than we understand the wherefore of picking a perfect mate. Although explored with seemingly infinite variation this is the simple premise behind Rob Reiner's enchanting When Harry Met Sally.

If you're one of the five people who haven't yet seen this spirited romantic comedy, it follows the 12-year and three-month long relationship of one Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) and Sally Albright (Meg Ryan). For all the right reasons these are two people that are absolutely wrong for each other and should never, I repeat, never under any circumstances be together. It just feels so wrong! In fact they're so wrong for each other it's difficult to explain why. Even their names, Burns (dark) and Albright (light), are used to epitomize the concept of night and day, right and wrong, and the fact that they're almost complete opposites. What was Reiner thinking? Harry's a wisecracking gloomy neurotic that's impulsively hyper-pessimistic and has no problem articulating his obsessive idiosyncrasies. Sally says he seems like a normal person, but really he's the angle of death. On the other hand Sally's cheerfully over structured, up front but difficult, and incredibly optimistic. Harry calls this the worst kind, high maintenance that thinks they're low maintenance. But, she just wants it the way she wants it, with everything on the side.

Their story begins with the old adage that you can learn plenty about somebody when you share a cross-country drive from Chicago to New York. The first time they met they couldn't stand each other. Harry is going with Sally's girlfriend, but before you can swing a dead cat in a crowded room he's hitting on her. She finds this and his dark side repulsive, and of course Harry buries the lead by telling her that men and women can never be friends. The second time they meet, five years later, he couldn't remember her name. He's getting married to Alice (Lisa Jane Persey) and she's a month into a new relationship with Joe (Steven Ford). In classic Harrian style he reaffirms his earlier declaration about men, women, and friendship; shares his feelings on post-coital bliss, and oh yes of course hits on her again.

Five years pass, they met for a third time and slowly become close friends. This time their personal lives aren't doing so well. He's getting a nasty divorce and she has just broke up with Joe. By the way, Alice and Joe were both lawyers and perfect for them. The problem was they weren't really in love with them, just in love with the idea of being in love. Over the years they've soften up a bit and luckily are so self-absorbed with their failed relationships they don't notice that they like each other more than they should under the circumstances. Throughout this post-relationship grieving-friendship development process they both grow as people and introduce their best friends, Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Jess (Bruno Kirby), who if they had found either Harry or Sally remotely attractive would not have got married. This time they became friends for a long time and then they weren't.

It's Sally that eventually forces the issue. She's sees a big fat dead-end just standing there waiting and is not content with being a consultation price at the next New Years Eve party. For his part Harry finally realizes that when you find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. That's just like him, he goes and says something that makes it impossible for Sally to hate him. To the tune of It Had to be You they find that although they live in a city of eight million opposites not only attract, they knock down walls to get close to each other. Why? Is it that two halves make a whole, two wrongs make a right, or maybe it's just some kind of weird cosmic destiny? So, in the end maybe what When Harry Met Sally really says is that finding someone you can spend the rest of you life with is a little like knowing something about finding a planet in a sea of stars?

You should meet Harry and Sally
Something has always bothered me about romantic comedies, i.e. you rarely actually get to see the couple fall in love, you know, actually witness the growth of the bond between them. They just fall in love, but you don't really get to be there. Except when you're watching 'When Harry Met Sally'. Rob Riener made a better film from a Nora Ephron script than she ever could. No offence to her, she's just a better writer than she is director. And Meg Ryan is so much better with Billy Crystal than Tom Hanks, although I have nothing but respect for Mr.Hanks. The thing is that its not just a genuinely and consistently funny movie, it's also terribly romantic. It spans about twleve years in the lives of both Harry and Sally, from their first meeting at college. They grow and change, they like and dislike each other, they become romantically involved and then they don't. The whole thing is very engrossing and witty but never seems far fetched or fantastical. I rate this movie as a contender for cinema's best romantic comedy. Enjoy the dialogue, the charm, the music, the drama and melodrama and give praise to Rob Riener and his magnificant team who made a wonderful film. The stars have not reunited since and it is possibly for the best as it would be an extremely difficult task to repeat this kind of quality. Chemistry and genuine emtion are hard to come by in this genre, enjoy it while you can. Its available on video and DVD and is rarely edited for T.V.

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