Review: YOU'VE GOT MAIL
Starring: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey,
Jean Stapleton, Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn
Directed by: Nora Ephron
Review by: Joy Wyse, The SILVER Screen Critic
In 1940 Ernst Lubitsch directed a memorable film entitled `The Shop Around the Corner'. It starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan as lonelyheart penpals in a Budapest notions shop. In 1949 is was remade by MGM as a musical starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson entitled `In the Good Old Summertime'. Then it became the Broadway musical `She Loves Me'.
Bringing it up to the computer age, You've Got Mail stands on its own as an original story, not as merely a re-make. Two people accidentally meeting in cyberspace is not the same as lonelyheart penpals. These two did not go looking for someone out of desperation. Each is supposedly happy with a significant other.
Joe Fox [Hanks], the scion of a mega-bookstore family, lives with Patricia Eden [Posey] a dynamic woman executive. Kathleen Kelly [Ryan], the owner of `The Shop Around The Corner', is in a relationship with Frank Navasky [Kinnear] Each of them have frustrations in their lives and they find a little bit of solace in each other when on the Internet. There is no intention to meet, or to break up their relationships. Each day they pass within footsteps of each other, not realizing that she is `Shopgirl' or that he is `NY152', their Internet names.
There are so many interesting sub-plots in the film. The Fox family would be the basis of a hilarious movie on their own. And, there's the love story involving Birdie [Stapleton] and her Spanish lover. Each and every character is well presented. You care about them all. When the Fox family causes the demise of Kelly's bookstore, you are genuinely concerned about the future of the employees.
The film's ending doesn't hit you over the head as to what course their lives will take, but you can figure it out all by yourself. Brinkley is a nice touch, too.
It will be referred to as a `chick' movie, or a date movie, but it is truly a good, old-fashioned love story. I could see it over and over, on TV. I give it a B+.
SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES.
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