What I'm saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Love is not always at first sight. In fact, sometimes love takes twelve years and a lot of problems and misfires and self-loathing cynicism before it takes hold.
The remarkable thing about When Harry Met Sally is that it is often as bluntly truthful as it is sweet and emotional. It’s more akin to an Apatow film in that respect—a comparison that makes sense because Billy Crystal is very much like a skinny 80’s version of Seth Rogen. The film is by the same director as Stand By Me and Princess Bride (two prior film club selections) and like those two films, this one is in my top 100 of all time.
Rob Reiner does a superb job coaxing terrific performances out of a great script and he directs the film beautifully as well. The way Reiner uses split screen harkens back to films like Pillow Talk, but vastly improves upon the older use. It’s such an iconic and perfect filmmaking tool for this genre that it’s been used regularly ever since. Romantic comedy, as a genre is an easy one to get wrong, because a successful romantic comedy needs to appeal to men as well as to women, that means it also needs to be plugged into the ‘current times’ as well. So it needs to feel fresh, honest and not clichéd or overtly manipulative. While a How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days can feel pretty funny to women or Zack and Miri Make a Porno can feel pretty funny to guys, neither are completely successful because the stories are subtextually more about tricking and trapping the respective love-candidate than the blooming of a relationship. Which is a fancy way of saying guys are made kind of uncomfortable by one and girls by another. But a film like Knocked Up (or this film) will work for both audiences.
Even though When Harry met Sally is clearly setting us up to root for their relationship, the film is not really setting the characters up to fall for each other from the first scene. It’s what the audience wants, but it’s not what the characters want. They are clear thinking, argumentative, funny and unique personalities that simply are not suited for one another at that moment in their life. They meet, they fight and then they go on with their lives—as do many of us in so many encounters over the years. And when they run into each other a second time, Harry doesn’t even really remember Sally. It’s an anti-cliché. They’re not bumbling after each other because they’re, “meant to be.†And as their separate lives play out in front of us we see them encounter each other again, and they don’t fall crazily madly in love with each other, they become friends, and as they become friends they’re falling quietly in love with each other without even realizing it at first.
This is a film both guys and gals will enjoy equally. It’s not improbable, stupid, terribly predictable or corny. It’s funny, mean, and sometimes quite delightfully shocking.
And it’s a great New Years movie as well.
