It must have been December 15th. I went with my sister and her husband to a local production of Oklahoma! A friend's son was in it. We stopped and ate on the way home and somehow got on the subject of the films of Rob Reiner. I didn't care for them. I couldn't stand Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, I thought The American President was a morbid romantic fantasy about Bill Clinton dating again after Hillary dies; Spinal Tap just didn't interest me. I know he made others.
They told me I should watch When Harry Met Sally. They were sure I'd like it.
We went home and were in the living room. I opened my laptop and looked at the news. Two people were found dead in Rob Reiner's home. The police wouldn't say who they were, but they did tell their ages which were the same as Rob Reiner and his wife. Variety was the first site I saw that stated that Rob and Michele Reiner had died.
My brother-in-law asked if I wanted to retract what I said about Reiner's movies. I didn't. It was unrelated. I sometimes separate the art from the artist.
So, after all this time, I finally watched When Harry Met Sally..., about two terribly unlikable people who start dating. It wasn't his fault, but Billy Crystal was not romantic leading man material.
When it came out, it was compared to the films of Woody Allen, but Woody Allen's characters generally had careers and families, parents, friends---they didn't just walk about talking and talking about how men were from Mars and women were from Venus.
The big gag in it, where Sally makes a spectacle of herself in a crowded restaurant, didn't really make sense. No one would do that. Earlier in the movie, Harry and Sally were in another restaurant and she was humiliated when she blurted out something about her sex life attracting the attention of other diners. Maybe it showed her character arc, how much she had grown and changed.
I feel a little hurt that my sister thought I would like this thing.
Written by Nora Ephron. Free on a streaming channel called Cineplex.
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