Case Studies

When Harry Met Sally



Information

This movie was released in 1989, and it follows friends Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan), who fear that sex will ruin their friendship. The certificate for this film is 15 because of strong language and sex references. This film raises the question of "can men and women ever be just friends?" which is something that a lot of romantic comedies look at because this question is what makes a movie humorous in the first place, with the characters trying very hard to just be friends but ultimately allowing their feelings to get in the way of their friendship.

The origins of this film were from the director (Rob Reiner) and his return to single life after a divorce, and based on his experiences he created the character of Harry. Nora Ephron, one of the producers and the writer of the screenplay, based the character off of herself and some of her friends. A lot of the dialogue is based around what Reiner and Crystal say to each other in their real-life friendship.

The budget was estimated to be $16m and at the opening weekend in the USA (shown 41 screens) it made $1,094,453. Although this is not a lot for the opening weekend, overall WHMS made a total of $92, 823, 546.

The production company, Castle Rock Entertainment, was independent until they became part of Warner Bros "to allow a stronger company to handle the overhead". This led to this company releasing movies such as the Polar Express, Friends With Benefits, Music and Lyrics, etc. Columbia, 20th Century Fox, and Sony are among the distributors for this film.

Critical Response

The overall reviews for this film were positive. It got a rating of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the comment "Rob Reiner's touching, funny film set a new standard for romantic comedies, and he was ably abetted by the sharp interplay between Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan."

On Metacritic, the film got a score of 76 out of 100 and this was based on 17 critics. As a result of this film, Roger Ebert called Reiner "one of Hollywood's very best directors of comedy" and it was "most conventional in terms of structure and the way it fullfills our expectations. But what makes it special, apart from the Ephron screenplay, is the chemistry between Crystal and Ryan."

Caryn James wrote a review for The New York Times, and said it was an "often funny but amazingly hollow film" that "romanticised lives of intelligent, successful, neurotic New Yorkers". He also said it was like "the sitcom version of a Woody Allen film, full of amusing lines and scenes, all infused with an uncomfortable sense of deja vu.

The critic from The Washington Post, Rita Kempley, praised Meg Ryan saying she was "summer's Melanie Griffith, a honey-haired blonde who finally finds a showcase for her sheer exuberance. Neither naif nor vamp, she's a woman from a pen of a woman, not some Cinderella of a Working Girl."

Mike Clark who writes for USA Today gave 3/4 stars to the film, saying "Crystal is funny enough to keep Ryan from all-out stealing the film. She, though, is smashing in an eye-opening performance, another tribute to Reiner's flair with actors."

One of the only, rare negative reviews came from David Ansen of Newsweek. He said he didn't like the casting of Crystal, writing "Not surprisingly, he handles the comedy superbly, but he's too cool and self-protective an actor to work as a romantic leading man", and felt that as a whole, the film "of wonderful parts, it doesn't quite add up."

The Proposal



Information

The Proposal was released in 2009, so it is a modern romantic comedy which follows Margaret (Sandra Bullock) as she forces her assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) to marry her so that she can keep her Visa status in the U.S. and avoiding getting deported to Canada. The question raised with this movie is can you keep things strictly professional between a man and a woman who work together. The tagline on the DVD cover is "here comes the bribe...", which is a play on words from "here comes the bride", hinting towards what may happen in the movie.

The budget for this film was an estimated $40m, and made $33,627,598 in the opening weekend in the USA, shown at 3,056 screens. In the UK, the film made £3,249,640 shown at 428 screens.

The production company is Touchstone Pictures, very popular for producing films like Step Up 2: The Streets, Runaway Bride and 10 Things I Hate About You. One of the reasons the film was a success is because it was made by a Hollywood studio. Also, Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock were already quite big actors before starring in The Proposal, having done movies such as Miss Congeniality, 28 Days (both with Sandra Bullock), The Amityville Horror and Blade: Trinity (both with Ryan Reynolds).

Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment are among the list of distributors for this film.

Critical Response

This film obtained a lot of good and bad (mixed) reviews from critics. It had a rating of 44% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 180 different reviews (an average rating of 5.3/10). The consensus was: "Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds exhibit plenty of chemistry, but they're let down by The Proposal's devotion to formula."

Another website, Metacritic, gave the film 48/100 based on 30 reviews.

Roger Ebert who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times gave a mixed review as well. The film got a 3/4 stars rating. He did complain by saying that the film "recycles a plot that was already old when Tracy and Hepburn were trying it out."

Another critic was Peter Travers who writes for the Rolling Stone. He was critical, calling it insipid. He said: "Anne Fletcher directs Peter Chiarelli's script like a manufacturer of hard plastic that is guaranteed to ward off intrusion from all recognisable human emotion."

A writer from The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, said that Bullock's character was awkward in this film compared to any of her other films. She continued on from this saying: "She's always been better in fundamentally independent roles that allow her to grab the wheel [...] and take the spotlight [...], an independence that persists all the way through the last-act coupling. She can smile as brightly at a man as well as the next leading lady, though, like all genuinely big female stars, she's really more of a solo act."

Tim Robey, who works for The Telegraph, gave it 2/5 stars after he expressed his disappointment towards this film.