You've Got Mail (1998)

Seeing this movie for the first time, 21 years after its initial release, I find that You've Got Mail is so intensely 1990's that it plays less as a typical movie of its time and more as if it had been written as a Clinton era period piece. This is particularly interesting given the linage of the story, You've Got Mail is a broad strokes remake of the 1940 romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner, which stared Margret Sullivan and Jimmy Stewart, which in turn had been based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklós Laszlo. It is the story of a romance begun by letter, in this case email, between two anonymous pen pals who have no idea who each other are in real life, and ironically in "real life" they hate each other. Meg Ryan (at the top of her career receiving $15 million dollars to play this part) is Kathleen Kelly, a small business woman who is fighting hard to keep the children's book store (The Shop Around the Corner) that her late mother started afloat against increased competition for a new nearby Barnes & Nobel type chain store (Fox Books) that is the family business of online flame Joe Fox (Tom Hanks).

It's the predictable comedy of misunderstanding, pulled off by able direction, a very efficient screenplay, and the performances particularly of the leads (at the time America's cinematic sweethearts) but also buttressed by a surprisingly good supporting cast including Dabney Coleman, Greg Kinnear, Parky Posey, Steve Zahn, Jean Stapleton, a pre famous Dave Chappelle, and a personal favorite Heather Burns. Though the plot has to do with the then current issue of 'big box chains' endangering the mom & pop shops (ironic now that many of the big box retailers are threatened by online competition) you will be disappointed if you expect this movie to have much substantive to say on the topic. No the business angle is merely a McGuffin to complicate Hanks & Ryan's courtship. For a film that is really paint by numbers it works surprisingly well, and has more ambiguity and paths not taken then I had expected. More or less perfectly what it set out to be You've Got Mail is a crowd pleasing romantic comedy that did crazy good business at the time of its release, more then a quarter of billion dollars world wide in 1990's money, and today is regarded as something of a classic. An old style romance in dial-up dressing. ***