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You've Got Mail Customer Reviews (64 - 66 of 71 Reviews)

A sweet romantic comedy
Since Meg Ryan usually irritates the hell out of me, I didn't think I'd care for this movie. I finally sat down and watched it, though, and I'm glad I did! It's a very cute love story that I enjoy watching over and over again.

The reason I dislike Ryan so much is because she seems to always play the same type of character in every movie, but in this case it works really well. Ryan plays Kathleen Kelly, an independent bookstore owner who is being forced out of business by Fox Books, a large chain of stores (similar to Borders) owned by Joe Fox (Tom Hanks). Kathleen and Joe run into each other several times, and even though they are attracted to each other at first, those feeling turn to mutual disgust as they engage in the battle of the books. However, both Joe and Kathleen are in dead-end relationships, and they meet each other in a chat room and start communicating regularly via email, not knowing each other's true identity. Joe eventually figures out the truth, and he has to decide if he wants to pursue these feelings that he's developed for Kathleen online, even though they can't stand each other in real life.

At first it bugged me that Joe played around with Kathleen for the second half of the movie, witholding information from her about who he really was. However, there's really no other way he could have handled it: if he had told Kathleen the truth right away, she likely would have been disgusted by him and tossed him aside. Instead Joe decided to test the waters with her and see if they could spark any real chemisty in real life and not just over the Internet. The end result is pretty cliche, but the final scene will generate a lot of "Awwws!" from romantics in the audience.

Romancing the kryptonite
The bookend piece to SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, this latter day pairing of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is SEATTLE's superior in many regards. Most obviously, Ryan and Hanks actually have a real life relationship throughout the course of the movie, not just a brief meeting at the end. Also the supporting characters are more satisfying. They do a generally better job than SEATTLE's to help us understand what Hanks and Ryan are looking for, and why it seems to take an inordinate length of time for them to drop the cyber charade and come clean. Each of the major supporting characters has a role to play in pushing the two characters towards their ultimate destiny. To be sure, the character types are quite similar to those found in SLEEPLESS, but they're somehow more fully realized here. Jean Stapleton, Greg Kinnear and Dabney Coleman are all interesting voices that we want to hear.

But I think what I like the most about MAIL is that though the film is purportedly a remake of THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, the love story is strangely more akin to SUPERMAN. Ryan is Lois Lane, having to fall in love with Hanks' Clark Kent, a man who is the opposite of everything she admires. Yet if affection can grow, Hanks will reveal his true identity and let her meet her cyber hero. In short, it's an unoriginal device done creatively.

And that's pretty much what all great romance is.

[DVD NOTES: What was a respectable, and even innovative, collection of extras at thte time of release has lost some of its luster as more innovative DVDs have been released in the past few months. Still, there's an interesting documentary and commentary that make it worth purchasing on DVD ]

Straight to Landfill Release
It is difficult to redeem a movie as deeply disturbing as You've Got Mail. And I don't mean to knock the reviewers here who said they liked it. If you bracket the disturbing political messages of the movie and just talk about the "romantic" part then, yeah, sure it's ok. But...

I'd have to say that a 119 minute commercial for AOL, Starbuck's coffee and Giant MegaBookstore Corp. was just too much to bear. What was Nora Ephron thinking?

The political message of You've Got Mail seems to be that corporate monoculture (as embodied by AOL/Starbucks/Barnes&Noble/etc.) is really just grand. That if you're a small bookstore (or coffeestore owner, or whatever) owner trying to survive against mega-conglamorates that as long as you fall in love with the enemy that it's all ok.

Kathleen Kelly's (Meg Ryan's character) consciousness of the real political struggle facing small business owners is staggeringly shallow. There is no small irony that she and Joe Fox (Hanks' character) can go to the same Starbucks and she is oblivious to the parallels between her choice of coffee and the choice she expects her customers to make when they buy books.

That irrepressible scene toward the end of the film when she loses her business and goes in to Joe Fox's Mega-Book Corp's store is enough to make one physically ill. She sees, lo and behold, that Mega-Book Corp really can be a wonderful, caring place. It's enough to make her forget that she's just lost her business she'd developed for years. And the thing that moves her to this new state of unconsciousness? Love for Mr. Joe Fox. Wow!

I'm not saying that Norma Ephron needed to make a politically engaged story. It is a romantic movie, after all. But why a long commercial for conglamorates like AOL and Starbucks?

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