Product Description
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Director Rob Reiner's WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... is a comedy about
the romantic travails of two neurotic New Yorkers who keep
running into each other over a period of 13 years and form a
friendship that constantly verges on romance. As the two
stubbornly resist courting each other, they gradually realize
there may be no two people more qualified to be in love in this
delightful, anecdotal film. Director Rob Reiner Star Billy
Crystal, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby, Meg Ryan, Lisa Jane Persky
Special Features: Widescreen - 1.85 Audio: Dolby Digital Surround
English, Spanish, French Stereo 2.0 - English Subtitles -
English, Spanish - Optional Additional Release Material:
Alternate Scenes - Deleted Scenes (8) Audio Commentaries - Rob
Reiner Director; Nora Ephron Screenwriter; Billy Crystal Star
Runtime: 96 minutes Year of Release: 1989.
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Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic
comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story
(very much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal's
unstoppable charm made it something really special. Crystal and
Meg Ryan play longtime platonic friends who keep dancing around
their deeper feelings for one another, and Bruno Kirby and Carrie
Fisher are their respective pals who fall in love and get
married. Ryan doesn't get a lot of funny material, but her
performance is typically alive and intuitive, and she more than
holds her own with Crystal's comic motor mouth and sweet
sentimentality. Reiner is on comfortable ground, liberated from
the burden of making serious statements in the lead-footed manner
of subsequent features. --Tom Keogh
On the DVD
The Collector's Edition offers seven new featurettes (the
previous Special Edition only had one documentary), beginning
with a sit-down between director Rob Reiner and writer Nora
Ephron waxing nostalgic on how the movie originated: He, recently
divorced from Penny Marshall, was a miserable single man, while
she was the screenwriter who rejected his initial pitch over
lunch ("It was a shame," she remembers, "because we hadn't even
eaten yet."). It's easy to see that Reiner is clearly Harry, and
Ephron is clearly Sally: He's the squawking chatterbox and she's
constantly corrects his memory (Sally's meticulous method of
ordering food is also a direct rip-off of Ephron herself). Other
featurettes show Billy Crystal's attempts to play Harry (or
Reiner, as it were); location filming in New York; the love
stories that served as interludes between scenes (again, the
counselors-at-camp story is from Ephron's parents); the
significance of the film over time; and more discussion on the
film's famous question: "Can men and women really be friends?"
Most of the stories from the featurettes are recycled in the new
film commentary by Reiner, Ephron, and Crystal (Reiner mentions
that the "I'll have what she's having" line, spoken by his
mother, is in the top 10 of AFI's top 100 movie lines no less
than five times overall), but the inclusion of Crystal, who
contributed many improvised lines in the movie, makes for a nice
easygoing repartee. Fans may be interested to know that Reiner
originally thought Harry and Sally shouldn't get together, until
he himself fell in love with his future wife on the set, but the
most hilarious tidbit involves Reiner storming the production
offices and polling all the women on whether or not they "fake
it" because didn't believe that really happened. Seven deleted
scenes--which were also included in the previous version--and
original theatrical trailer round out the set, but Harry Connick
Jr.'s "It Had to Be You" music video is missing. Still, the
special features are a great look into a romantic comedy that
clearly remains a meaningful experience for cast, crew, and
audience alike. --Ellen A. Kim