Deconstructing Harry

Harry Block is a successful writer who builds his fiction out of the people around him, turning his marriages, affairs, family and friendships into material. Those same people have grown tired of appearing in his work, and most of them want nothing to do with him. When his old university invites him back to honour him, he struggles to find anyone willing to make the trip with him, a problem made worse by the tangled state of his personal life.

Woody Allen directed and wrote the film, the twenty-fifth of the forty-eight features he has directed in chronological order, following Everyone Says I Love You and preceding Celebrity. Allen plays Harry, with Judy Davis, Kirstie Alley, Elisabeth Shue, Billy Crystal and Bob Balaban among the principal cast. Jean Doumanian produced, and the production credits also include Fine Line Features, Sweetland Films and Magnolia Productions.

The film was released in December 1997 and runs 96 minutes. Made for a budget of 20 million dollars, it took about 11 million dollars worldwide, so it did not recover its cost at the box office. Audiences have rated it 7.3 out of 10 on IMDb from around 50,000 votes and 7.2 out of 10 on TMDB from roughly 1,000 votes, while a critics' score of 7.4 out of 10 rests on 37 reviews, a level of approval close to the two audience scores.