“The decade that followed had been a weird one for the rom-com, which seemed to retreat from Annie Hall’s not-awful sexual politics all the way back to The Taming of the Shrew. In the 1980s, when a blonde woman and a not-blond man were onscreen together, the idea was usually that the woman needed some serious thawing out (as in TV’s Moonlighting and L.A. Law)…the genre needed a game-changer, and romantically and culturally, When Harry Met Sally… was it. If you want to know how we got from Annie Hall to Knocked Up, there’s only one route, and it’s through this movie.”
On the film’s 25th anniversary, Mark Harris revisits When Harry Met Sally… for Grantland. “It’s not Annie Hall, but a movie about people who have seen Annie Hall.”