Read real life ‘Harry met Sally’ stories

Released 20 years ago this summer, When Harry Met Sally … famously pondered whether men or women can be friends without “the sex thing” getting in the way, as Billy Crystal’s Harry so bluntly put it.

But looking at all of the romantic comedies that tried to match Rob Reiner’s touching and funny 1989 hit, and failed, a better question might be: Will there ever be a mainstream comedy about adult men and women, friendships and sex that rings as smart and true as this one?

The answer is: maybe. But no one’s managed to pull it off in the past 20 years. And given the recent crop of dismal, crass, chemistry-free chick flicks, such as the depressing downer P.S. I Love You or movies about undeserving jerks who get the girl or guy anyway (Made of Honor, Serendipity), I’m not hopeful.

Historically, When Harry Met Sally worked, in some ways, because moviegoers were hungry for movies that weren’t about teen angst, cops blowing up stuff or a formerly arrogant Tom Cruise learning an important life lesson about … something.

It was about a decadelong connection between two imperfect grown-ups, Harry and Sally (Crystal, Meg Ryan), who took their time getting to know each other, with a Nora Ephron script inspired by real experiences (hers and Reiner’s) with a lived-in casualness that can’t be rushed.

When Harry Met Sally … did more than answer the question about, as Harry Connick Jr. sang on the soundtrack, “making two lovers of friends” (read further for my take on that). It sweetly, soberly and satisfyingly addressed a few other issues very few movies have even tried to get near since, and ones I didn’t really get when I first saw the movie at 18, but that, at 38, ring true now:

“HE’S NEVER GOING TO LEAVE HIS WIFE, IS HE?” The divine Carrie Fisher, who in 1989 was still mostly known to movie fans as Princess Leia, plays Sally’s friend, Marie, who has a long-standing affair with a married man. Most movies would have made her wacky, slutty or tragic. But Ephron’s script is smart enough to let Marie’s affair play out to the point where she one day looks up and finally speaks the truth her friends have been trying forever to smack into her lovely head. She finally gets it. And it’s the thing Marie has to get past before she can find true love. Who among us hasn’t almost missed out on something awesome because we refuse to get out of our own way? (Put your hand down. I don’t believe you.)

“ALL THIS TIME, I THOUGHT HE DIDN’T WANT TO GET MARRIED. BUT, THE TRUTH IS, HE DIDN’T WANT TO MARRY ME.” When Harry Met Sally … is full of “Ouch, too close to home” moments, and the ouchiest is the scene when Sally grieves over the news that her ex, Joe, is getting hitched to someone else. She’d convinced herself, when they broke up, that he just wasn’t made for commitment, when the truth was that he wasn’t committing to her. Again, it’s the sort of truth that requires admitting that the problem, sometimes, is you. I don’t know one woman over 25 – me included – who hasn’t talked herself into believing that she’s with a commitmentphobe who pretty much commits to the first girl he runs into on the street on his way back from breaking up with you.

CAN WOMEN AND MEN BE FRIENDS WITHOUT SEX GETTING IN THE WAY? All right, so here’s the big one, which turns out to be a trick question. When Harry and Sally meet after college, he says that they can’t, as long as one of the friends wants to have sex with the other, which is probably why that friendship doesn’t happen for another 10 years. And when they finally do become close, they manage to be friends for years, even though they’re beginning to be drawn to each other. When they finally do give in to that attraction, on the night that Sally has that realization about Joe not wanting to marry her, they prove Harry right – she nests too quickly, he bails, and they wind up not only not dating but not being friends.

And again, a lesser movie would have had them find their way back to each other immediately, probably with one or the other breaking up the other’s wedding at the altar. Ephron and Reiner let them pursue and ignore each other, fight, and then really miss each other. When Harry runs, breathless, through the streets of New York to finally declare his love on New Year’s Eve, he realizes that yes, it’s hard to just be friends with someone you have deeper feelings for.

But when it’s right, love can be even deeper when you really, really like each other.