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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.
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