Fun Romantic Comedy!

Rating: 8/10 (17 June 2011)

When Harry Met Sally is a wonderfully entertaining comedy about love and relationships. Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) are two very different people who disagree on one main subject: can men and women really just "be friends" without having sex? After their first meeting during a drive from Chicago to New York, they go their separate ways with no answer and no friendship. It takes them over a decade, after later encounters, failed relationships, a humorously horrifying blind date, and further complicated situations, before they have their answer and discover their destiny. By no means an empty "chick flick" or tear-jerker romance, When Harry Met Sally is full of witty dialogue, contains both serious and comical portrayals of life and love, and speaks to today's audience just as much as it did in 1989. Though When Harry Met Sally don't offer alternative possibilities to the question, "Can men and women just be friends?" it does show us that, while relationships are never easy and the road to love can be a long and complicated one, we will eventually find our way in the end.
Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan give a good performance and seem like a natural couple, while Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher (Harry and Sally's friend-couple Jess and Marie), are great supporting actors whose inclusion contributes well to the story's overall theme. Besides Harry and Sally's arguments in the midst of their developing relationship, their interaction with Jess and Marie also show the different aspects of human relationships and male/female situations.
The filming techniques were overall very well-done. Although many of the scenes use a simple quick cut, jumping from one scene to the other, this does not make the film appear choppy or incoherent. Most events flow naturally, and when the film goes back and forth between the lives of Harry and Sally and their conversations among friends, this faster cutting speed is done effectively and creates a more comical, lighthearted mood to deal with the theme. Occasionally throughout the film, a brief segment with an old couple suddenly appears, and the couple tells us a story of how they met. This adds a nice touch and ties in with the overall story. They are there to remind us how randomly relationships can begin and that Harry and Sally's relationship is such a story. Angles from the indirect-subjective point of view show us the different emotions that the main characters go through during the course of their relationship, and our natural focus is on them as we watch their facial expressions and conversations against a blurred background.
In many ways, When Harry Met Sally can be considered a more modern Annie Hall when it comes to theme, style and presentation of the plot. Though different, we see a lot of similar techniques used, such as fast cuts between scenes, simultaneous scenes (Harry and Sally talking on the telephone to each other and watching the same film), and internal dialogue (when Harry and Sally are simultaneously thinking about how to tell each other that their making love was a mistake). Both films are witty presentations of the complexity of human relationships, though in my opinion, When Harry Met Sally produces more laughs and is less philosophical than Annie Hall. The couple in Annie Hall never does fully solve their relationship dilemma, but Harry and Sally do. However, it's not the end result, but the journey that makes this movie – and life – an interesting one full of entertainment.