When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Directed by Rob Reiner
Starring Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan

I remember watching this film in high school at a friend's house one night. There were a bunch of us over and we couldn't decide what to watch. The girls eventually won the battle and tossed in When Harry Met Sally. Trouble was, they decided to fast forward through all the "couple on the couch" scenes, so until today I've never really watched this movie in its entirety.

Story
"Men and women can't be friends, the sex thing always gets in the way." That about sums up the movie. Tracking the lives and romances and on-again-off-again friendship of Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) from college graduation to their early 30s. There's the famous "fake orgasm in the diner" scene with Rob Reiner's mom playing the woman who orders "what she's having" at the end. But oddly, that wasn't the laugh for me. I got a good chuckle watching Meg Ryan switch instantly from "Passion" to deadpan, the quick change was comedy timing gold in my opinion.

The "couple on the couch" scenes I mentioned earlier are scattered throughout and seem to be interludes separating long chunks of time in the lives of the main characters. The couples are cute and their stories somewhat interesting, but ultimately forgettable. They're sharing an intimate moment of their lives - how they met - and though you feel their love, you really either go maudlin remembering how you met your sweetie or depressed that you don't have a story like theirs to tell.

Having gone down the "friends before lovers" road with my wife, we have our own stories to tell, though some are a bit complicated if you delve into the details. Better to glaze the surface and find that happy romantic nostalgia that this movie aims to bring out in its viewers.

Lots of witty banter and monologues make the movie fun and heart wrenching throughout, but ultimately you get that feel good moment at the end, even if it's somewhat ruined by the penultimate "couple on the couch" scene that you knew was coming all along.

Acting
That witty dialogue I was talking about? Some of it is really good and you have to wonder if they were delivering lines or ad-libbing some of what the scene called for. There are a few scenes when you really see some great acting from Meg Ryan. Billy Crystal only falls into his usual shtick a few times, notably in a museum when he starts up one of his accents and at a Sharper Image when he starts up a karaoke machine with "Surrey With A Fringe On Top" from Oklahoma.

Effects
The only thing I'd call an effect is the awful hairpiece they gave to Crystal for his college scenes. Looked like a cat crawled on his head and died.

The only romantic comedy I can remember with Special Effects was Sleepless in Seattle and that was pretty bad. You're supposed to "Aww..." not "Ooh!" at these movies for a reason.

Music
Lots of old Louis Armstrong songs and songs from that vein depicting either couples in love or at odds but still in love (Tomato/Tomahto). Fitting to the story of course. Personally, I love these songs and they were all over this genre a while back. Makes me wonder if 40 years from now I'll be watching a romantic comedy with my wife and hearing "Do me baby, one more time" as the background music. Nah...

Atmosphere and Immersive Details
This movie used the story to move you along and there's really not much care for small details or even the large ones. During an early scene when Harry & Sally are driving down Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, they're approaching the city from the north and the Hancock Tower is looming in front of them. On this point of that road as you are driving south, there are apartments to the right of you and Lake Michigan to your left. But as the camera changes to view the actors through the windshield, there are buildings where the lake should be. In another scene early on, the two are in a diner (not THE diner) and the diner is full of patrons, but when they leave and go back to their car in the parking lot, the lot is practically empty.

Summary
All said, this is a classic flick, though not one that I'd be wanting to bring out over and over. For this reason, I've given it 3 Stars (Liked It). There's just enough romance and just enough comedy between the moments when they're at eachother's throats and moments when they're depressed to make watching this movie enjoyable, but not with enough warm fuzzies to want to watch it again any time soon. Maybe I'll trot this out again in 40 years on Interactive 3-D YouTube Blu-ray and splice in my wife and I on the couch for good measure.

Watch Now

So Netflix recently started a new service on their site called Watch Now. I'm signed up for the $14 plan so this entitles me to 14 hours worth of movies per month. Pretty cool.

My guess is that this is in answer to Blockbuster's recent campaign touting that unlike Netflix, you don't have to wait by the mailbox for the next movie to arrive, you can also get movies from their brick & mortar stores. Watch Now is like Netflix saying "who needs stores?".

So I figured I'd give it a try since this would help me to whittle down my list a bit faster. Unfortunately, they don't have all their titles available in Watch Now format, but this makes sense since the service is new and they do seem to be adding new films regularly. What is nice is that they allow you to pick movies from your queue, though seemingly not in any particular order and watching the movie does not remove it from your queue as if you had sent it back in the mail.

The service requires that you install a viewer, which is nothing new to anyone who's watched a TV show like LOST on their PC. The download was fast and problem free and the movie started right up. The player checks your video and internet to determine what resolution and image quality will work best for your PC. The controls are basic. There's a full screen option that gives you a pretty good picture, even at 54kbps via wireless. In Full Screen mode, clicking anywhere on the screen will toggle play/pause. There's no Forward or Rewind, just a slider that goes minute by minute. There's also no option for language or subtitles which would have been nice, but I can understand their omission. All in all, not a bad setup and once I can hook my Laptop to my TV, probably not a bad way to watch a movie.

What I'm really curious about is my bank of hours, especially considering that the movie I was watching (When Harry Met Sally) stopped midway through when my wireless network decided to grind to a screeching halt for some unknown reason. I eventually had to shut down my laptop to get it to work again. 57 minutes into the movie and I have to start all over again. Now, the movie's about 95 minutes long, so since I had to start over and move the slider to the 57 minute mark, am I still only using 1 hour and 35 minutes or would that instead count for 3 hours and 10 minutes?

I don't foresee using this feature all of the time, especially with the hourly system. It would have been better to say "congrats, you get 6 movies" and at least then I'd know that I'm not going to have to watch my minutes to ensure that I don't run out in the middle of a gripping film when I hit the 13hr 59min mark. And honestly, 6 movies is a lot and I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. It wouldn't be too far off the mark from 14 hours and in fact I'd probably end up under 14 hours most months unless I was planning to watch a bunch of old scifi like 2001, Solaris (the original 4 hour Russian version, which is in my queue) and Dune.

All-in-all, pretty cool and simple to set up and use. Add some features and change the meter from hours to films and I'm all over it.