Amazon.com Essentials:
Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic
comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story (very
much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal's unstoppable
charm made it something really special. Crystal and Meg Ryan play
longtime platonic friends who keep dancing around their deeper
feelings for one another, and Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are their
respective pals who fall in love and get married. Ryan doesn't get a
lot of funny material, but her performance is typically alive and
intuitive, and she more than holds her own with Crystal's comic motor
mouth and sweet sentimentality. Reiner is on comfortable ground,
liberated from the burden of making serious statements in the
lead-footed manner of subsequent features. --Tom Keogh
