When Harry Met Sally... Review

The screenplay is the whole asset. Ephron built it out of interviews with Reiner about single life, and the result is dialogue that sounds overheard rather than written: the correct way to order in a restaurant, the difference between high maintenance and low maintenance, the twenty-year-old argument about whether men and women can be friends. Barry Sonnenfeld shoots New York in autumnal warmth and mostly stays out of the way, which is the right call for a film that is essentially two people talking in cars, bookstores and diners.

Harry Connick Jr.'s standards do a lot of unearned emotional lifting. Billy Crystal's timing is sharper than his sincerity, and Meg Ryan's brightness covers the moments the script leaves her stranded. Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher steal every scene they are given. The structural problem is that nothing actually happens for long stretches; the interstitial couple interviews exist to supply momentum the plot cannot, and the New Year's resolution is exactly the ending the formula requires.