When Harry Met Sally
You've Got Mail
Sleepless in Seattle
Personally, the answer to this question is:
1.You've Got Mail
2. (Super close, almost tied for first) When Harry Met Sally
3. Sleepless in Seattle
I'm not sure what it is about these three movies but I love them. Legitimately. I can name other romantic comedies that I love (Alex & Emma, The Proposal, While you were sleeping etc.) but these stand alone, in my mind, as the best of the genre. (I've talked about You've Got mail before.)
I'm not quite sure why. Here's what I have come up with so far.
1. Maybe it's the fact that Meg Ryan is in all three and I think she is adorable. Not the Meg Ryan of today with plastic surgery, she is the shadow of her former self.
2. You've Got Mail is a remake of an earlier movie called, Shop around the corner. Is it that older films contain something special and updating them allows them to be with reach to the general public? The stories written historically are able to stand the test of time, like an updated version of shakespeare? (ie. 10 things I hate about you/Taming of the shrew)
3. Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner. Could it be that Norah Ephron wrote H&S and Mail? Something is seriously wrong with this woman. She can write. She pulls on my heart stings, and makes bust a gut laughing.
Or is it that Rob Reiner who directed H&S and starred in Sleepless? He has a way to capture emotion, happy and sad and communicate in a completely real way.
Is it the combined forces of these two kamikaze's of hollywood?
4. Finally, is it the timelessness of the stories? When Harry Met Sally the impossibility of love within the context of friendship. You've Got Mail, technology brings us closer while pushing us further away. (sidenote: should we be concerned with a robot uprising? Technology taking over the world? Skynet has been released.) Or is it the romance and simple impossibility of true love at first sight?
Personally, I think aspects of these films can stand right up next to films like, Casablanca (Another great love story) and Citizen Kane
Give me your thoughts. Other Films? Agree or Disagree.
I think I'd put When Harry Met Sally first, because I've seen You've Got Mail a million times. I ended up buying it and watching it a lot. But I never bought WHMS. So, that charm pushes it to the top for me.
ReplyDelete"1. Maybe it's the fact that Meg Ryan is in all three and I think she is adorable. Not the Meg Ryan of today with plastic surgery, she is the shadow of her former self."
Oh yea. Meg Ryan was 'cute' in You've Got Mail; she was 'beautiful' in Sleepless in Seattle; but she was 'sexy' in When Harry Met Sally. But agreed. Why did she mess everything up with plastic surgery?! What happens to these people?!
"The stories written historically are able to stand the test of time, like an updated version of shakespeare? (ie. 10 things I hate about you/Taming of the shrew)"
There's something to this. I agree.
"Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner."
Reiner is a great director: A Few Good Men, Stand By Me, Misery, Princess Bride. The writing is good too. Ephron should have won for WHMS over the Dead Poet's Society, even though I do like that movie.
"sidenote: should we be concerned with a robot uprising? Technology taking over the world? Skynet has been released."
YES! A.I. is a real concern. There are labs experimenting with A.I., trying to give them consciousness, showing that it's not peculiar to humans, showing there's nothing special about us. If consciousness can be manufactured, we can make our own Adam and Eve, play God. But then there's a slippery slope. Do they get civil rights? Government benefits? Will they get reparations? Will there be a coup? Would their intelligence outwit our own? Gosh, it's scary.
Other movies:
Blade Runner - Not exactly a love story, but I'm in love with it. It started it all. Rick Dickard (Harrison Ford), a blade-runner (police-assassin), is called out of retirement to hunt down 'replicants', bio-robotic beings that look just like a human, manufactured at the corrupt Tyrell Corporation. They are created to do awful labor humans don't want to do. There's a pocket of resistance lead by Roy Batty, who has thoughtful soliloquies on the meaning of life. I love the film noir, the femme fatale, the complexity of Ford's character, the philosophy and ethics involved with genetic engineering, the Biblical and Frankenstein allusions, the bleak and dark and sweeping cityscapes, the exploration into what it means to be human. It's an open question throughout the film whether Deckard is a replicant or not!