the first big disappointment of the holiday season is you've got mail ( * ½ ) , nora ephron's uneven re-pairing of sleepless in seattle lovebirds tom hanks and meg ryan . surprisingly empty and enormously light , mail is anchored only by the presence of its two huge stars . once past the nifty computer-generated opening of a virtual new york city , viewers will be introduced to the two main characters . ryan is kathleen kelly , an endlessly perky and chipper owner of a small children's book store . hanks plays joe fox , the puffy-faced owner of a huge chain of successful bookstores ( a la barnes and noble ) that is opening its new outlet around the corner and intends to run kelly's shop out of business . they unknowingly met in a chat room ( before the film starts ) and have been communicating via e-mail for months…but neither knows who their pen-pal really is . the rest of the story unfolds so predictably unimaginative that it actually rivals sister act 2 : back in the habit in terms of a sheer lack of originality . essentially a remake of the shop around the corner , the 1946 jimmy stewart/margaret sullavan classic , mail plods along at powerfully sluggish two-hour pace that is about 30 minutes too long for fare this shallow and slight . nobody that has been to the movies in the past forty years should be entertained by this film or surprised by its outcome . hanks' phoned-in performance is particularly vacant and reminiscent of harrison ford's wooden turn in sabrina , while ryan is , as always , a pleasure to watch . his charm is turned down to around `3' and hers is cranked up to about `12' . mail will likely draw many comparisons to seattle – a film about two love-hungry adults that fall for each other site unseen . why did the studio honchos think that the average american needed to see a flick so similar that they actually enlisted the same stars ? the answer is simple – money . hanks and ryan are huge box office draws . why ? because he's the type of guy that men want to be , and she is the girl that most women secretly wish they were ( but will never ever admit…ever ) . mail also boasts an amazing cast of co-stars – greg kinnear , jean stapleton , dave chappelle and dabney coleman capably handle their roles , but steve zahn and indie-goddess parker posey stand out in their smaller parts . how does a film pay for this many stars of this magnitude ? the answer is simple – product placement . prepare to have america online , starbucks , apple and microsoft products shoved in your face for a full two hours . i have a few suggestions for better plots ; the most obvious being a more realistic story of two people who meet on the internet . he would be a 400-pound unemployed star trek fan pretending to be a successful businessman , while she would say that she resembles cindy crawford but would actually turn out to be a man . oh , yeah , and he would be a serial killer , too . the tagline would be `life is like a box of chocolates . ' other suggestions include you've got herpes – a madcap comedy ( presumably starring either pauly shore or charlie sheen ) about a guy who has a drunken one-time sexual encounter with a girl he meets on the internet and wakes up with genital warts and a white , clumpy discharge . the rest of the film would be a hilarious romp as the shore/sheen character tried to track down the one-night stand , who would also turn out to be a serial killer . tagline – `this christmas , pornography isn't the only thing brad flaherty downloads . ' or you've got cancer – a bittersweet drama , directed by david lynch , about a willy loman-type travelling salesman who neglects his family and dies of prostate cancer . things take a surreal turn when , one year after his death , the soul of the salesman is transferred to the toilet brush in his family's downstairs bathroom . the brush tries to be a better father to his two small children , but fails miserably as the children grow so frightened of him that they develop a psychological fear of the bathroom and must be hospitalized for severe constipation . tragically , when the family returns home from the hospital , they find the brush hanging from a pipe on the bathroom ceiling . then the two kids would grow up to be serial killers . tagline – `frank schwartz thought his life was bad…until he died . ' how about you've got conjoined twin myslexia – the big-screen debut of television's south park centers around the origins of the two-faced school nurse . the kids would get to use dirtier words , cartman's manhood would be revealed , stan would be a serial killer and kenny would die in every reel . tagline – `give us your money ; it's south park ! ' actually , you've got anything ( except mail ) would have been an improvement . you've got mail ( 1 : 59 ) is rated pg for some very mild language and some adult situations . 
