"Where Harry met Sally... Hope you have what they had"

Rating: 10/10 (1 June 2010)

This is a movie that would make Woody Allen proud of - funny, touching, witty, sparkling as champagne, stylish, sunny and clever. It may not consist of the original situations but it looks at the familiar situations from some very special angle, which makes it romantic, sweet but not cloyingly saccharine-sentimental. This movie proves what a talented director Rob Reiner is or at least was back in the 80s-early 90s when he made This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Stand by Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally...(1989), Misery (1990), and A Few Good Men (1992).

New York where Harry and Sally keep bumping to each other is beautiful as Paris and attractive, like a dream. Musical score goes directly to a viewer's (at least, this viewer's) heart. But the most interesting in the movie are the two main characters, Harry and Sally, complete opposites, friends for 12 years, the confidants and supporters in each other past relationships gone wrong and broken hearts these relationships cause. Harry and Sally are destined to be together, and the fates stubbornly drove them close until they finally realize that happiness is only a phone call away. Meg Ryan is extraordinarily sweet and cute in the movie, Billy Crystal - funny and charming. The film about them forever has the place in history as one of the best romantic comedies ever, and it deserves it status fully. Almost ten years before the famous television series Sex and the City, Rob Reiner, Nora Ephron (screenwriter), Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal along with Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby told a great story about the search for a kindred soul in the big city, for the unique half that makes us complete. Is "just friendship" possible between young and attractive heterosexual man and woman? Probably yes, but I am glad that this film's friendship gradually and naturally turns in true love, when you know your partner all too well with their pros and cons, and cons are just as dear as cons.

Nora Ephron, who wrote the script that based the main characters on herself (Sally) and Rob Reiner (Harry), was nominated for writer's Oscar. Ephron wrote the scripts to and directed such popular films as Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie & Julia, but her masterpiece, in my opinion, is the screenplay about Harry and Sally in NYC back in the end of the 1980s. Interviews with the real couples, added to the film, perfectly complement and bring out the story of Harry and Sally. The scene in the restaurant is considered one of the funniest of all time, and very deservingly so. Bravo, Meg! Incidentally, an older woman at the next table, which tells the waiter, "I'll have what she is having", is the director's mother, Mrs. Estelle Reiner. The scene was filmed at the Katz's Delicatessens in Manhattan. At the table, where Sally and Harry sat, to this day there is a sign: "Where Harry met Sally... hope you have what she had".