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On Hating "When Harry Met Sally"

"When Harry Met Sally" is not the masterpiece people want it to be.

Oh, sure. It's clever. The fake orgasm! The "dating rolodex" that Carrie Fisher keeps in her purse! The way Sally places an order in a diner!

But this isn't a movie with living, breathing characters. It's a movie where Nora Ephron talks to Nora Ephron. Harry is Nora. Sally is Nora. I think Nora knew that, and I think Nora's greatest strength was in the form of the personal essay. But maybe you can't put bread--or enough bread--on the table, if you're simply writing personal essays.

I grow tired of the formula even before it's written out. Boy and Girl will attempt to arrange the love lives of others, but, in trying, they will fail. In failing, they will find themselves coming closer together. Sex will be a disastrous event, a detonation of a small bomb, and then there will be weeks of silence. Boy will recite all the particular quirks he loves in Girl: "the fact that you're cold when it's seventy degrees," "the fact that you cry during CASABLANCA...." This recitation will cause Girl to melt.

I'm not saying the movie is joyless. There's the fun, fake dialogue; the shots of New York at Christmas; the Harry Connick score.

But let's stop pretending this is a great movie.

When Ephron's film came out, people said, This is derivative of Woody Allen, and it's not as good.

Then there was a backlash: How rude to say, just because it's witty and it deals with heterosexual NYC romance, it's derivative of Woody Allen!

And I'm here to offer this: Actually, "Harry Met Sally" *is* a poor copy of a good Woody Allen movie, and if you want something really striking and fresh in a script, I recommend "Love and Death." There, the two leads do not end up together, one actually seems to count the days until the other might be murdered, and Napoleon--Napoleon himself!--has a memorable bedroom cameo involving wine and a clumsy faux-seduction. This is the work of a truly eccentric, truly gifted screenwriter. It's better than anything Meg Ryan has done.

Not a popular opinion, I think, but I'll defend it to my grave. We can agree to disagree.
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