# You've Got Mail (1998)

### reviewed by
Michael Redman

    Sleepless In Cyberspace

    You've Got Mail
    A Film Review By Michael Redman
    Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman

    *** (Out of ****)

When the perception of America's downtowns became one of fear and inconvenience, we decided that we'd rather shop in Disneyland. Thus began the malling of the nation. Although it never happened, the original concept of shopping malls was that they would become miniature towns.

What they've turned into are sanitized homogenous Everywheres. Walk into any mall in any city and it doesn't matter where you are, you're in "The Mall". You can buy the same pair of jeans from the same Gap in the same mall in nearly every city in the country. The malls are safe and easy shopping but they're remarkably boring.

Even worse they've resulted in the deaths of uncountable enchanting small shops. As the managers of the mall stores are packing up the day's money and shipping it off to the home office thousands of miles away, the owners of the small shops are staying awake nights trying to figure out how to pay bills. Eventually they can't.

Now that downtowns are regaining some of their appeal and becoming gentrified, it's happening there also. Stick a Starbucks on every corner, an Old Navy and Barnes and Noble down every block and soon we'll have one city multiplied many times over across the continent.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is the owner of The Shop Around The Corner, a small children's bookshop and she's just received terrible news. A Fox Books Superstore is opening in her neighborhood and she knows that means the end of the business that her mother started decades ago.

When she runs into Joe Fox (Tom Ryan), the youngest of the Fox Books patriarchy, at a social gathering, they take an instant dislike to each other. Joe is the ultimate businessman delighting in running competitors out of business. ("It's not personal, it's business.")

At their homes they both wait for their lovers to leave each morning before logging onto AOL to check emails. Booting up her Mac Powerbook and signing in as "Shopgirl", Kathleen has lost her cyber-heart to "NY152" whom she met in an over-30 chatroom. They've never met and don't know each other's actual identities, but exchange poetic messages across the ethers.

Since this is a movie, NY152 is Joe. In a real chat room Shopgirl would be a 13 year-old girl pretending to be a sex goddess and NY152 would be a German Shepherd.

A remake of the 1940's "The Shop Around The Corner", the film is a return to light romantic comedies of bygone days. Reuniting Hanks, Ryan and director Nora Ephron from "Sleepless In Seattle", this proves that you can use the same actors, virtually the same plot and still produce an enjoyable film.

"Mail" has about a thousand things going for it. It's a feel-good film with phenomenally likable actors. It's a Christmas release: just the time when people need a break in their frantic schedule. It's about finding the true love everyone searches for.

Tom Hanks is the all-American guy. His roles are generally those of highly principled courageous men. He's easy to trust. He begins this film as a hard-nosed businessman, but you just know he's going to warm up.

Meg Ryan is the closest thing to being America's sweetheart that the cynical nineties can allow. Every single thing about her is perky and she brightens up the screen whenever she's on. For the males in the audience she could probably carry a film by just showing up.

These two are people that we'd like to have as friends or lovers and desperately want to cling to the illusion (or reality) that they are the same people offscreen as they are in the films. We want them in our lives even if only for two hours. They are what makes the film work although their chemistry is Love-Lite. There is a spark there, but no fire.

The supporting cast is fairly strong. Greg Kinnear is Frank, Kathleen's Luddite boyfriend who is passionate about everything except her. Parker Posey, the queen of independent films, plays Patricia, Joe's live-in. Patricia is a hyper career woman who as Joe says, "makes coffee nervous." You get the feeling that both couples lead such busy lives they haven't noticed that they have fallen out of love. Until the chatroom.

The film is not completely wonderful. It's acceptable that everyone anticipates the ending in advance, after all this is a romantic comedy. What's not quite so agreeable is that everything is so damned cute.

Meg Ryan is adorable. We don't have to be reminded of that over and over. Yeah, she looks good even in flannel PJs, but showing her prance around to a cartoon music soundtrack is banging us over the head with the obvious. When the two internet lovers pass on the street without realizing who each other is, it's amusing. The second and third times add nothing.

Joe makes major changes through the film, but once he discovers who Shopgirl is, he is still manipulative, always with the upper hand. There is a lack of honesty in the character that is troubling.

Kathleen's struggling shopkeeper role is compromised by the fact that she has far too many employees in a small store and towards the end seems able to live comfortably without the shop's income. Her and Frank's breakup is the stuff of fantasy, never to occur in the real world. But maybe it's looking too deep to notice these things. This is a fairy tale.

Some of the film rings true especially for those of us who check email before that first cigarette or cup of coffee. The comment that closing the shop would be the "brave thing to do" because it would give her the chance to imagine her life some other way is an intriguing idea.

Although I enjoy both actors, "Sleepless In Seattle" was not my favorite film, suffering as it did from the same terminal cuteness. This one is better but it could have done with some judicious editing. It's not a masterpiece, but it is nice. I can live with that.

(Michael Redman has written this column for over 23 years and in the current spirit of confessing affairs that might result in a conflict of interests, has to state for the record that he has never had an affair with Meg Ryan -- at least not in the physical world. Email anonymous musings to Redman@indepen.com.)

[This appeared in the 12/23/98 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com.] -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review at http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman

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