Stubs - You've Got Mail

You’ve Got Mail (1998) starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey. Directed by Nora Ephron. Screenplay by Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron. Based on the film screenplay The Shop Around the Corner by Samson Raphaelson. Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Nora Ephron. Run time: 119 minutes. Color. USA. Romantic Comedy

Movie remakes can be like impersonation, the sincerest form of flattery and sometimes a story takes time to get it right, take The Maltese Falcon, which took three takes. But then there are the films that did work, like The Shop Around the Corner (1940), which don’t need to be remade but are. The first time was as a musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949) as a vehicle for Judy Garland. These were all based on the play Parfumerie by Miklós László, a romantic comedy taking place in a store around Christmas time.

The third take, driven by Nora Ephron, the writer/director behind such films as When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Michael (1996), and Julie & Julia (2009), came out in 1998 and re-teamed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who had already worked together on such films as Joe vs. The Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle. This film is often cited in lists of drive-by Christmas films, even though Christmas, unlike the play or the first film, really doesn’t have much to do with the story or the setting.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) runs The Shop Around the Corner, a small children's bookstore she inherited from her mother on Manhattan's Upper West side. She is in a relationship with Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear), a left-leaning columnist for The New York Observer. We are at the beginning of the home computer revolution, but Frank prefers the electric typewriter. And even though he doesn’t live with Kathleen, early on he unveils a second, backup, typewriter for her apartment.

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan),You've Got Mail

Kathleen, who has a pricey Apple laptop, uses it primarily, it seems, to carry on a correspondence with an unknown pen pal, whom she met on a discussion board shortly after celebrating her 30^th birthday. Calling herself Shopgirl, she opens the computer as soon as Frank is gone, and waits for the dial up for AOL to announce that she has mail from NY152, which is apparently her only contact on the very “new” internet.

The handle NY152 belongs to Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), the son of a family that runs Fox and Sons Books, a chain of discount bookstores. Founded by his grandfather Schuyler Fox (John Randolph) and run by his father Nelson Fox (Dabney Coleman), the company is in the process of building a new superstore around the corner from The Shop Around the Corner with the goal of putting her, and other independent booksellers, out of business. Like Kathleen, Joe is in a relationship. Patricia Eden (Parker Posey) works for a book publisher and seems to be working harder at her job than Joe does at his.

The Fox family from l to r: Patricia Eden (Parker Posey), Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), Annabelle Fox (Hallee Hirsh), Nelson Fox (Dabney Coleman), Gillian Quinn (Cara Seymour), Maureen, the Nanny (Katie Finneran), Schuyler Fox (John Randolph).

Joe, we learn, has an unusual family structure, as his father and grandfather have had multiple marriages. His father has a 4-year-old son Matthew (Jeffrey Scaperrotta), Joe's half-brother and his grandfather has an 11-year-old daughter Annabel (Hallee Hirsh) who is, therefore, Joe’s Aunt.

Joe about to give up reading one of Kathleen's favorite books.

Shopgirl and NY152's correspondences are not necessarily romantic, but are more an ongoing conversation that is not supposed to get too personal, but serve as a way for each to say things they feel they can’t say to their flesh and blood partners. They even talk books, something important to both.

Christina (Heather Burns), Kathleen, and George (Steve Zahn) take a look at the competition.

When news hits about the new Fox store, Kathleen’s employees George (Steve Zahn), Aunt Birdie (Jean Stapleton), and Christina (Heather Burns) worry, but Kathleen is convinced they will survive.

Joe stops by The Shop Around the Corner for story time.

On an outing with Annabel and Matthew, Joe takes them to Kathleen's store for a story time event. The two meet for the first time at the cash register and have a pleasant conversation until, that is, she expresses disdain for the new Fox Books store. Joe refuses to give his last name and leaves abruptly with the children, especially after Matthew keeps spelling their last name, F-o-x.

Their second face-to-face meeting turns hostile.

Later that week, they meet again at a book publishing party. There, she learns Joe’s identity. She accuses him of deception and spying while he belittles her store, earning each other's hostility.

Shopgirl writes NY152 about her experience and her feelings of regret. However, NY152 tells her to fight and quotes The Godfather’s “go to the mattresses” war chant. Kathleen does her best, getting Frank to write about her store’s plight in his column, which leads to news coverage on the local TV stations. Frank even ends up on a morning show, catching the eye of the host, Sydney Anne (Jane Adams).

Joe helps out Kathleen when she gets stuck in a cash-only line at the grocery store and only has a credit card.

Kathleen tries to avoid Joe in future, but they both end up shopping at Zabars, a grocery store. Trying to avoid him, she ends up in a cash-only line at the grocery store and the cashier, Rose (Sara Ramirez), refuses to let her charge it. However, Joe comes to her rescue, using his “charm” to win Rose over and getting her to let Kathleen charge her purchase.

The Shop Around the Corner goes out of business.

But the efforts to save the store fail and business steadily declines. Eventually, Kathleen makes the hard decision to close the store. After the stock has been sold off, her last look into the store brings back memories of her as a little girl being swirled around by her mother.

Kathleen realizes that she doesn’t love Frank. When they talk about it, Frank admits he’s not in love with her, either and they amicably end their relationship.

Meanwhile, Joe and Patricia get caught in a stalled elevator and Joe comes to the decision that he doesn’t have love Patricia either and they break up.

NY152 realizes he has feelings for Shopgirl and eventually arranges for a face-to-face meeting.

On the way, Joe is escorted by Kevin Jackson (Dave Chappelle), the closest thing he has to a friend and the manager at the new store. Joe is nervous about going in and asks Kevin to look for him. When he relates that the woman is Kathleen, Joe walks away. However, later he comes into the café and sort of harasses Kathleen before leaving.

Joe decides to visit Kathleen to see if she'll forgive him for their past animosity and for killing her business. But the day he shows up, Kathleen is under the weather. And even though she asks him to leave, Joe invites himself in. His visit makes Kathleen think better of him and so he continues to meet her, slowly wearing her down.

The day Shopgirl and NY152 are to meet, Joe and Kathleen meet up.

Meanwhile, NY152 arranges for another meeting with Shopgirl. On the day of the meeting, Kathleen and Joe get together for coffee. He tries to make a play for her, asking her to forgive him for his little indiscretion, closing down her business. Kathleen becomes emotional, hinting that she feels the same way, but cannot bring herself to forego her feelings for NY152.

However, upon arriving at the meeting place, she hears a man's voice calling for Brinkley, a dog, and sees that NY152 is, in fact, Joe Fox. Kathleen cries tears of joy and reveals that she hoped it would be him, and they share a kiss.

The happy ending, because it's in the script, not because it makes sense.

The ending may be what is expected in a Rom-Com, but this one seems to only work because it says so in the script, either that or because Kathleen is a broken person, neither of which are satisfying as a viewer. I will give the film credit; it makes Joe Fox out to be such a**hole that he seems almost irredeemable as a character. He might have had a change of mind, but it is hard to imagine that Kathleen could forgive a man who not only shut down her business, but also crushed her dreams.

Even though this is not technically a remake of the film The Shop Around the Corner, it is impossible not to compare the two. While I have not seen the play, it is my understanding that the film does adhere closer to it than the Nora Ephron version. In the 1940 film, the two pen pals, Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), work in the same store and while Klara may think Alfred is out to hurt her, he really is trying to help her. In the more recent take, Joe is out to crush Kathleen in business. He does not have her best interest at heart.

There are only a couple of scenes that hark back to the 1940 film and they don’t handle the scenes as well. While in Ephron's film the café scene is funny, it’s not as funny as the original film. And when Joe goes to visit a sick Kathleen, it is similar to when Alfred visits a sick Klara at her mother’s apartment. However, in You’ve Got Mail, Joe seems more intrusive than Alfred. He even appears to touch her face with his hand, which struck me as rather a violation of personal space with someone he was not intimate with.

One thing missing from the Ephron version is the cast of characters that run rampant in The Shop Around the Corner. There is no equivalent in her version of Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut), or Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) or Pepi (William Tracy). These characters add to the richness of the setting and to the story. The closest thing here is George Pappas (Steve Zahn), but most of his antics are done off-screen.

Jean Stapleton plays Bridie Conrad, Kathleen's aunt, who helps run the store.

It is nice to see Jean Stapleton as Birdie Conrad, whose character name is perhaps a passing wink at Conrad Birdie from Bye Bye Birdie. But she doesn’t really add much to the story. It’s also established that she is independently wealthy and, therefore, not impacted by what happens to the store. You get the idea that everyone’s job is at stake in The Shop Around the Corner, so they all want it to succeed, even if they don’t own a piece of the business.

While infidelity takes place in The Shop Around the Corner, it happens to the boss, Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan). In You’ve Got Mail, it is the father Nelson Fox who seems to have trouble keeping it in his pants, as he seems to look at women as potential bedmates. It goes a long way to making the Fox family less endearing than Morgan’s Matuschek, who was the victim of his wife’s adultery with one of his employees.

Also, it doesn’t help you like the main characters any better when they are both in committed relationships and are looking for solace from an unknown partner on the internet. In their own way, they are cheating on their significant other. Their own sneaking around on the computer to check and send emails testifies to the feeling of guilt that they must have. Also, it doesn’t say much for either if they’re in loveless relationships.

And Frank and Patricia are both superfluous characters, as they could be lifted out of the film without really having much of an impact. In fact, I think the film would have been stronger without these characters. Rather than making Kathleen and Joe seem vulnerable, it makes them both a little less likeable for how they treat their partners.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Meg Ryan’s appearance on screen meant that you were watching a Rom-Com, she was so synonymous with the genre at that stage in her career. However, her presence is not enough to make the film satisfying. And again, I can’t see how her character could ever love a man who set out to ruin her financially. It might have been a saving grace if Joe had tried to save her shop, but it was “business not personal”, which doesn’t go far enough to make up for it.

For his part, Tom Hanks shows that he can play a shit and play it well. I did not like Joe Fox, which was probably the intent of the film, but I disliked him so much that there was no redeeming him, at least for me. He comes off as a self-centered prick until suddenly he doesn’t. And the part of the film where he supposedly shows his “charm” and gets a stubborn cashier to let Kathleen charge her groceries doesn’t really come off as charming at all. I don’t see why the cashier seemed enamored with him and bends the rules. Again, it says so in the script so she does, but I don’t see or hear it on the screen. I don’t see Joe as a changed man, but rather one who is changing his tactics to get what he wants, which is Kathleen. I don’t see this as a "happy ever after" sort of relationship with him involved.

You’ve Got Mail has all the makings of a David and Goliath sort of story, but rather than the little guy killing the giant villain, the villain destroys David, eats his sheep, and then David goes out with him.  There is something unrewarding in that.

Nora Ephron has done better work as a writer and a director. I’m sorry, but this one doesn’t work. If you’re going to the trouble to remake a classic film, or make a new film based on the source material, you really need to bring your A-game or your effort will pale by comparison.

You’ve Got Mail is not a satisfying take on business or relationships. And, if you’re watching it at Christmas time, ask yourself why you’re not watching the far more satisfying The Shop Around the Corner.