Title: You’ve Got Mail
Year released: December 18, 1998
Directed by: Nora Ephron
Notable Cast: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey
You’ve Got Mail HBO MAX
Fun Facts
– Meg Ryan didn’t have a computer before making the movie.
– The designers did such a good job making the fake Fox books that people walking by kept asking when it was going to open.
– At the beginning of the movie, the flower stand worker looks pregnant. At the end of the movie, there is a sign at the stand that says “it’s a girl”
– At one point Warner Bros published the emails of Joe and Kathleen on their official movie website, and you could read them until up a few years ago.
Synopsis
Struggling boutique bookseller Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) hates Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), the owner of a corporate Foxbooks chain store that just moved in across the street. When they meet online, however, they begin an intense and anonymous Internet romance, oblivious of each other’s true identity. Eventually Joe learns that the enchanting woman he’s involved with is actually his business rival. He must now struggle to reconcile his real-life dislike for her with the cyber love he’s come to feel.
Review
If you’ve ever thought originality was dead in Hollywood in this case you’re partly true. The roots of this tale start in 1937 in a theater in Budapest. A play about pen pals unknowingly working together in the same shop. For those younger than me pen pals is a snail mail version of Twitter. The story continued through a Jimmy Stewart drama (The Shop Around the Corner), a Judy Garland musical (In the Good Old Summertime), and the Broadway’s She Loves Me a revival of which starred Zach Levi.
You’ve Got Mail is my favorite Nora Ephron movie. It doesnt break the RomCom mold but it expands it to be more organic. Meg Ryan is at her eccentric finest. All of her wistful asides befit a children’s bookstore owner. Foregone conclusion Tom Hanks will elevate anyone’s plot or dialogue. Everywhere you look this movie is chock full of great character actors. Steve Zahn, with his mossy candles, is a favorite in this house