YOU'VE GOT MAIL
A movie review by Joe Barlow
(c) Copyright 1999
STARRING: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey, Greg Kinnear DIRECTOR: Nora Ephron WRITERS: Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron RATED: PG YEAR: 1998 SEEN AT: Starlite Theater, Charlotte NC
RATING: *** (out of a possible *****)
"You've Got Mail," the new Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan extravaganza, strikes a chord somewhere between 'engaging romantic comedy' and 'shameless product placement,' with very little manuvering room on either side. Not since "The Wizard," the late '80s film starring Fred Savage and a bunch of Nintendo games, have I seen a movie so determined to inspire consumer spending (in this case, the America Online service). It's one thing to have a character use a real-world product in a film; it's quite another to have the film grind to a halt while the product is shamelessly promoted by the characters.
It's true that product placement, the process by which vendors pay movie studios big bucks to get their wares up on the screen for a fleeting moment or two, is a neccessary evil, allowing the studios to offset the cost of shooting their latest $100 million blockbuster. If Hollywood can make an additional million dollars by having Bruce Willis wear an Adidas cap in one scene, they're gonna go for it. I can understand this practice (even if I don't like it) in an expensive effects-laden film. I'm less eager to accept it in a romantic comedy. There are no special-effects costs to offset here.
Joe Fox (Hanks) and Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) are both booksellers in modern-day Manhattan. Kelly is the owner of The Shop Around the Corner, an intimate childrens' bookstore founded by her mother, which has been serving the New York community for thirty years. The store is Kelly's passion: she knows every customer by name, and is intimately familiar with each and every book on her shelves. Nothing gives her greater joy than helping a customer find just the right selection.
Joe is the manager of Fox Books, a mammoth Barnes and Noble-type retail outlet which opens down the street from Kathleen's store. Soon the new arrival has usurped all her old business, and The Shop Around the Corner teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Seeking advice and reassurance, Kelly turns to the same place many people go when they seek comfort: cyberspace.
For quite a while, Kathleen has been corresponding with a friendly guy she met in an AOL (America Online, for the uninitiated) chat room. Over the past several weeks they've become good friends, but they have one unusual stipulation in their friendship: they don't want to share any personal information with each other, including their real names. They address each other only be their handles (Kathleen is SHOPGIRL; he is NY152). Naturally, Kathleen's e-mail buddy turns out to be none other than Joe Fox, her arch-enemy in real-life. The rest of the film chronicles their adventures as the two engage in their inevitable descent into amour.
Forgetting the issue of product placement, the biggest problem I had with this movie is the lack of intimacy on the part of our two protaganists. Surely anyone who is as smitten as both Hanks and Ryan's characters are would not be content to keep their e-mail on such a cold, distant level, never opening up or revealing any personal details about themselves. (In fact, I question whether people truly *can* become infatuated with each other when no personal details are known. Perhaps in real life, when physical beauty can make up for a lack of information, but not in cyberspace. Let me know your thoughts on this subject, dear readers.) The fact that they refuse to share anything personal about each other, even their real names, positively reeks of "forced plot contrivance"; ie, a screenplay that forces its characters to do something that makes little or no sense, simply because there would otherwise be no story.
Director/co-writer Nora Ephron, who also worked with Hanks and Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle," based her screenplay on the Jimmy Stewart classic, "The Shop Around the Corner" (in which the two characters fall in love via postal letters, rather than e-mail). If her screenplay is a little heavy-handed at times, her direction is quite adequate, and she coaxes strong, confident performances from the entire cast. Particularly fun is Parker Posey ("The House of Yes"), who appears briefly as Hanks' girlfriend. Greg Kinnear also appears as Ryan's sweetheart, and is entertaining with his character's puffed-up self importance.
"You've Got Mail" is neither the best or worst of the current crop of holiday films. Occasionally simple-minded and perhaps fifteen minutes too long, it is nonetheless light-hearted, and admittedly kind of fun (particularly after Hanks discovers Ryan's identity, and chooses to keep her in the dark a while longer). Significantly, this movie is one of the few non-animated films in recent memory to earn a family-friendly PG rating. And I hate to adopt the cliche', but I'm hard-pressed to think of a better 'date' movie.
E-Mail: jbarlow@earthling.net Joe Barlow on Film: http://www.ipass.net/~jbarlow/film.htm
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