Review: When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Director: Rob Reiner | 96 minutes | drama, comedy, romance | Actors: Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby, Steven Ford, Lisa Jane Persky, Michelle Nicastro, Gretchen Palmer, Robert Alan Beuth, David Burdick, Joe Viviani, Harley Jane Kozak

Harry and Sally first meet when they travel to New York together. At first it doesn’t really click, but over the years they keep crossing each other’s paths and even become good friends. But Harry claims during their first meeting that men and women cannot be friends because at some point one person always wants to have sex with the other. So can Harry and Sally remain friends or will they at some point want to be more than that?

“When Harry Met Sally” is one of the films, if not the one, that laid the foundation for modern romantic comedy. A movie famous for the scene where Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a restaurant. Although the clothing is now very eighties and therefore dated and Meg Ryan now has a completely different face, the story is timeless and could now be successfully filmed again. “When Harry met Sally” is rightly a classic of the romantic comedy genre, funny, romantic and heart in the right place. Because the emphasis in this film is on the comedy and not on the romance, it is not sticky anywhere and it is therefore not a real chick flick. And unlike many popular American comedies, the emphasis is not on absurd situations and / or sex jokes, but mainly on word jokes, which makes him more in the vein of Woody Allen in his heyday than in the line of the average American comedy. But at the same time it remains light enough to appeal to a large audience.

Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal are a fun couple to watch, they are well attuned to each other and have good chemistry together. Billy Crystal has never been more fun when he is here. After this film Meg Ryan would build a career on the role she plays here and in this film you can clearly see why she was the queen of romcoms for years. “When Harry Met Sally” is really just a must-see movie. This is really just to see the aforementioned famous scene, but mainly because it is one of the nicest romantic comedies ever made. It’s just a very nice feel-good film that wouldn’t look out of place in anyone’s collection.