You've Got Mail

You've Got Mail, 1998. Directed by Nora Ephron. Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Dabney Coleman, Jean Stapleton, Greg Kinear, Parker Posey.

There should be two provisions written into any future contracts that are presented to Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. One: they must co-star in a movie together once every two or three years. Two: they should never work for Nora Ephron ever again.

You've Got Mail (which refers to the announcement that accompanies new mail messages in the AOL e-mail system), is a sweet movie with charismatic stars that should work better than it does. It takes a perfectly servicable premise from the old James Stewart movie, The Shop Around the Corner, and overlayers it with a cybernetic gimmick and with writer/director Ephron's own annoying neurotic anima. That she has been buoyed by stars Hanks and Ryan for two and a half films now (Ryan appeared, sans Hanks, in the Ephron scripted When Harry Met Sally) can only be attributed to blind luck. Ryan and Hanks, a teaming that bears favorable comparison to, say, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, or, dare I say it, Tracy and Hepburn, are capable of saving even marginal material like this (we shall mention in passing and then mercifully forget Joe vs. The Volcano). Hanks has already won his two Oscars (and is poised at this writing on the brink of winning a third). It is a damned shame that Meg Ryan has not been similarly honored. She is the premiere comic actress of her generation, capable perhaps of high drama as well if given the chance. But comedy doesn't get the respect it deserves.

Oh--I'm sorry. I was talking about You've Got Mail, wasn't I? Here it is in a nutshell. It has a screenplay that is not worthy of its actors and actors who give more to it than it deserves. The result is emminently watchable, but not earth-shattering. It gives the audience for these sorts of movies everything they are looking for: likable stars, romance, light feminism, and a tear-jerking happy ending. But it has no ambitions beyond that and it delivers what it does deliver in the most perfunctory manner. It isn't bad, but it is a calculated bubble gum movie for 25-35 year old urban professional women and misses out by not appealling to anything more than a market demographic.