When Harry Met Sally | The Critique

 When Harry Met Sally . . ." is a story of two people and about how it takes them 12 years to fall in love. We're with them, or maybe a little ahead of them, every step of the way.

Harry meets Sally for the first time at the University of Chicago, when they team up to share the driving for a trip to New York. We see them only at those intervals when they see each other. They meet, for example, several years later and she's with a new boyfriend. They keep on meeting until they realize that they like one another, and they become friends - even though on their very first cross-country trip, Harry warned Sally that true friendship is impossible between a man and a woman, because the issue of sex always gets in the way.

There are lots of lines to quote when you're telling friends about the movie.  It's only occasionally that the humor is paid for at the expense of credibility - as in a hilarious but unconvincing scene where Sally sits in a crowded restaurant and demonstrates how to fake an orgasm.

Harry is played by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan is Sally, and they make a good movie couple because both actors are able to suggest genuine warmth and tenderness. She is an open-faced, bright-eyed blond; he's a gentle, skinny man with a lot of smart one-liners. Crystal is one of the rare actors who can make an apology on the screen, and convince us he means it. Ryan has a difficult assignment - she spends most of the movie convincing Harry, and herself, that there's nothing between them - and she has to let us see that there is something, after all.

This film is probably Rob Reiner’s most conventional, in terms of structure and the way it fulfills our expectations. But what makes it special, apart from the Ephron screenplay, is the chemistry between Harry and Sally.

Written By: Ali Naqvi