You've Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nora Ephron, co-written by Nora and Delia Ephron, and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. The film is about two people in an online romance who are unaware that they are also business rivals. It marks the third coupling of stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who had previously appeared together in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).
You've Got Mail received mildly positive reviews from critics.
Maps, Directions, and Place Reviews
Plot
Kathleen Kelly is involved with Frank Navasky, a leftist newspaper writer for The New York Observer who is always in search of an opportunity to root for the underdog. While Frank is devoted to his typewriter, Kathleen prefers her laptop and logging into her AOL email account. Using the screen name "Shopgirl", she reads an email from "NY152", the screen name of Joe Fox whom she first met in an "over-30s" chatroom. As her voice narrates her reading of the email, she reveals the boundaries of the online relationship; no specifics, including no names, career or class information, or family connections. Joe belongs to the Fox family which runs Fox Books--a chain of mega bookstores. Kathleen runs the independent bookstore The Shop Around The Corner that her mother ran before her. The two are shown passing each other on their respective ways to work, revealing that they frequent the same neighborhoods in upper west Manhattan. Joe arrives at work, overseeing the opening of a new Fox Books in New York City with the help of his best friend, branch manager Kevin. Kathleen and her three store assistants, George, Aunt Birdie, and Christina, open up her small shop that morning.
Following a day with his eleven-year-old aunt Annabel and four-year-old half-brother Matthew, Joe enters Kathleen's store to let his younger relatives experience story time. Joe and Kathleen have a conversation that reveals Kathleen's fears about the Fox Books store opening around the corner. He omits his last name and makes an abrupt exit with the children. At a publishing party for New York book business people later that week, Joe and Kathleen meet again, where Kathleen discovers Joe's true identity. She accuses him of deception and spying, while he responds by belittling her store.
The Shop Around the Corner slowly goes under. Kathleen enters Fox Books to discover the true nature of the store is one of friendliness and relaxation, yet without the same dedication to children's books as her shop. Her employees move on to other jobs; as Christina goes job hunting, George gets a job at the children's department at a Fox Books store and Birdie retires.
When the two finally decide to meet, Joe discovers who he has been corresponding with. At first he decides not to meet with Kathleen, but then to meet with her without revealing his on-line identity, leading them to clash once more. Joe later resumes the correspondence, apologizes, and promises to eventually tell her why he stood her up.
After both break up with their significant others, Joe realizes his feelings towards Kathleen and begins building a face-to-face relationship, still keeping his on-line identity a secret. He arranges a meeting between Kathleen and his on-line persona (along with his dog Brinkley), but just before she is to meet this on-line friend, he reveals his feelings for her. Upon arriving at the agreed meeting place, she hears Fox calling to Brinkley, who has run ahead, and sees that her on-line friend is really Fox, and that she loves him, too.
Laptop Mailing Box Video
Cast
Production
Influences
You've Got Mail is based on the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László and its adaptations. Parfumerie was later remade as The Shop Around the Corner, a 1940 film by Ernst Lubitsch, which in 1949 was adapted as a movie musical, In the Good Old Summertime by Robert Z. Leonard starring Judy Garland, and finally in 1963 as a Broadway musical with She Loves Me by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (composer and lyricist, respectively, of Fiddler on the Roof). You've Got Mail updates that concept with the use of e-mail. Influences from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice can also be seen in the relationship between Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly -- a reference pointed out by these characters actually discussing Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennet in the film. The joke when Tom Hanks explains that the little girl is really his aunt is taken from Israel Zangwill's story "A New Matrimonial Relation" in The Bachelors' Club (1891).
Filming
Principal photography took place primarily in New York City's Upper West Side.
Delia Ephron, recalling the film's bookstore setting, said, "Once we decided that she would be an independent-bookstore owner, the reason we made it a children's bookstore is, I think, we always tried to make movies as personal as we could. To find the thing in it that was personal. And we grew up loving children's books more than anything." Nora Ephron similarly remarked in the film's audio commentary, "This was something that was very important to us--that there be first editions of old children's books. It's part of what make this a serious bookstore. We wanted to sell the idea that this was a place that really cared about the history of children's literature." Additionally, Ephron had Ryan and Burns work in an actual bookstore for a week prior to filming in order to get them into character.
Michael Palin appeared in several scenes that were cut from the film.
Soundtrack
A successful soundtrack was released on December 1, 1998, and featured a mixture of classics from the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the work of Harry Nilsson, as well as new original recordings and covers. The score to the film was written by the English composer George Fenton.
Reception
Box office
You've Got Mail debuted No. 1 at the North American box office, earning $18.4 million over its opening weekend. It ultimately grossed $115,821,495 from the domestic market and $135,000,000 from foreign markets for a worldwide total of $250,821,495.
Critical response
You've Got Mail received mildly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a "Fresh" rating of 69% based on 83 reviews, with the critical consensus, "Great chemistry between the leads made this a warm and charming delight." Metacritic gives a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-out-of-four stars and lauded the "immensely lovable" main characters. Janet Maslin of The New York Times also praised the film, writing of the leads, "Ms. Ryan plays her role blithely and credibly this time, with an air of freshness, a minimum of cute fidgeting and a lot of fond chemistry with Mr. Hanks. And he continues to amaze. Once again, he fully inhabits a new role without any obvious actorly behavior, to the point where comparisons to James Stewart (...) really cannot be avoided." Lael Loewenstein of Variety similarly called it a "winning romantic comedy" and praised the chemistry between Hanks and Ryan, writing, "they show why they are two of Hollywood's most bankable and, in many ways, most traditional stars." James Berardinelli further remarked:
You've Got Mail has the virtue of delivering exactly what's expected from it. It's a feel-good movie that offers enough comedy and romance to warm the heart without risking a sentimental overdose. Fans of Sleepless in Seattle will almost certainly fall in love with the similar-yet-different nature of the production; only die-hard cynics will be turned off by all of the unabashed good will. If there are messages to be found here, they're that romance is still thriving in our technological era, and that well-written romantic comedies starring Hanks and Ryan don't represent much of a gamble for the financing studio.
Conversely, Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post criticized the film's use of product placement and its overly "adorable" characters, writing, "For some reason, this film made me feel like a Christmas goose being fattened for slaughter. Its force-fed diet of whimsy cloyed long before the eagerly anticipated romantic payoff arrived to put me out of my misery." Rolling Stone later included You've Got Mail in their list of "Most Egregious Product Placements in Movie & TV History" for the film's frequent use of AOL trademarks.
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