WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Rob Reiner's winning streak of
directing only very good films ends with a mediocre romantic
comedy about two people who do not come off nearly as cute as
the film called for them to be. There are some creative
touches, but the main storyline is just okay. Rating: 0.
Rob Reiner is one of the few current major directors that most Americans can recognize by sight. He has put on a little weight since his ALL IN THE FAMILY days, but he is still recognizable. But more than just having visual recognition, he is also recognized as being a major directing talent. After THIS IS SPINAL TAP, THE SURE THING, STAND BY ME, and THE PRINCESS BRIDE, one tends to expect a lot from him as a director. One looks forward to a Rob Reiner film. However, this one was really disappointed by WHEN HARRY MET SALLY..., a film that seems to assume it has a wonderful warm and winning story, but somehow just does not have a story to match its expectations.
The story is punctuated by interview insets, much like Warren Beatty's REDS, but here we have older couples who love each other and obviously have had successful marriages, reminiscing about how they first met. And as far as that goes the film is warm. These insets take up only about six or seven minutes od the film and unfortunately it is in these insets that we find most of the characters we end up liking. The main line of the story is about how Harry got coupled with Sally, but since these people are more superficially cute than lovable (and not always even cute), there is something really missing in the connections between the insets and the plot. Harry and Sally first meet after graduation when Harry was something of a male chauvinist and Sally was just a little cold. They fail to hit it off. Flash forward five years. Harry is now something of a male chauvinist and Sally is now a little cold. They run into each other in an airport and fail to hit it off. Flash forward another five years to 1987. Harry is now something of a male chauvinist with a better sense of humor, and Sally is now a little cold and has self-doubts.
From there we follow the two trying to be platonic friends, wondering if they should have sex, discussing if sex partners are sincere, discussing Harry's promiscuity, ad nauseum. Do we care? Sure, there is some voyeuristic appeal to hearing people talk about their sex lives. Do we care any further about these people as people? I did not. I had the feeling that when these people walked off camera they winked out of existence. Harry is a political consultant. I'm not sure what a political consultant does, but Harry's friends don't seem to be political consultants, and Harry never so much as reads a newspaper. This is not creating a character. Nora Ephron, the script writer, just filled in a blank labeled "Occupation"; she did not create a character.
Billy Crystal as Harry and Meg Ryan as Sally are attractive, engaging people, and I was willing to find out about their characters' sex lives while they were going well. It did not make for great cinema, but it is watchable. When their relationship starts to sour, both characters are pretty tiresome. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... is all right as a piece of entertainment for a little while, but it is by far reiner's worst film. I give it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
(One final note: Nora Ephron (a female) has a male character express the philosophy that a male cannot just be friends with an attractive woman without wanting sex with her. I can just hear a lot of women saying, "Ah- ha! I knew it all along!" In fact, the woman who lived next door to me in my first apartment said pretty much the same thing, eyeing me suspiciously. I will tell you what I should have told her. It is a paranoid myth and is false. You can go through life believing the worst of people and nobody will be able to prove you wrong. But for the record, women, it simply is not true of all men. If you use myth to rationalize negative behavior toward men, it is you who are in the wrong.)
Mark R. Leeper
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