Twenty-five years ago yesterday, Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally… premiered in a handful of big cities (it would open wide a week later). Here are a few random thoughts on the legacy of this perfect romantic comedy.

• WHMS was a landmark event for pretty much everyone involved. Billy Crystal, never anyone’s idea of a traditional leading man, had failed to make a big-screen impact until this film, but went on to make City Slickers, Forget Paris and Analyze This. Meg Ryan came of age here, and basically owned the 1990s in a variety of romcom and dramatic roles. Screenwriter Nora Ephron had enjoyed previous success as a writer, but nothing like this; she soon graduated to directing (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Julie & Julia). Harry Connick, Jr., had released two unremarkable albums prior to his appearance on the When Harry Met Sally… soundtrack (the album was essentially his third solo record), and after this became a major singing star with a sideline as an actor.
• The only real exception to the above observation is director Rob Reiner himself, who had built a splendid career in the 1980s with respected hits like Stand By Me, The Sure Thing and The Princess Bride. WHMS was another feather in his cap, to be sure, and he followed it up with some more solid work (Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President), but every movie he’s directed since 1995 has underperformed at the box office and/or been very, very bad. He has a new film, And So It Goes, coming later this summer; fingers crossed.
• Over at New York Magazine there’s an article discussing the mise-en-scène of When Harry Met Sally… It’s an analysis of how the lead characters are positioned relative to each other on screen in different scenes, and how that positioning corresponded to their feelings about each other at that moment in the story. It’s like auditing a class in film school; check it out.
• Ephron’s script (famously punched up in the comedy department by Crystal) didn’t really have any catchphrases to speak of, but gave us a number of soon-to-be immortalized relationship concepts. The “high-maintenance” romantic partner, the transitional lover, the stigma of taking a partner to the airport: All from When Harry Met Sally….
• The movie made wonderful use of its New York environs, so much so that it drew fire from some critics for being a watered-down version of a Woody Allen movie. But much as a I enjoy Allen’s oeuvre, I submit that no Allen movie ever made Manhattan more visually appealing than Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematography did here.
• The film was rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America, for language. There are some relatively frank discussions about sex between Harry and Sally, though mostly involving euphemisms, and I guess at least one use of a really bad word. (Plus, you know, that scene in the deli.) Meanwhile, the film competed in its theatrical release with Licence to Kill, a James Bond movie, that was heralded for its dark themes and which concluded with a fight scene in which Bond set fire to a bad guy. That movie was rated PG-13. I’m just saying.