Review: You’ve Got Mail

Directed by: Nora Ephron

Written by: Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron

Starring: Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton, Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn

Rating: [3.5/5]

Forming relationships online has grown in prominence since the 1990s with the accessibility and convenience it provides to build something before even meeting the other person in the flesh. A method of dating that now dominates the way individuals come together and while You’ve Got Mail displays the early vestiges of this practice through something as modernly primitive as email, it gets right at the heart of something quite heartwarming and insightful about the way we form these relationships. 

While in a committed relationship, Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) engages in email conversations with someone she met in an online chat room. The pair do not share any personal information with each other but have quite a rapport. Little does Kathleen know that the individual she’s emailing with happens to be the heir of a bookstore chain threatening to put her smaller one out of business. 

The thought of this current generation of individuals communicating via email would make them shudder not because it’s not an efficient way to chat with another person but because other more user-friendly ones have become available. Personally, I only use email for business or professional reasons mainly because of the amount of spam that can build up or the subscriptions I continue to forget to unsubscribe from. However, this era had email as a way to communicate behind a screen, and even with the dated use of communication, it digs into the realities of what it means to communicate with someone through the internet as opposed to in person as seen through Kathleen and Joe (Tom Hanks). 

What they write to each other online versus what they say to each other in person without the initial knowledge of their personas displays plenty about how these two dynamics operate. Online these two have nothing to judge each other with except for the words they carefully parse through and send after much thought. When in person you see the person’s face and can judge every particular detail before even saying the first word that has the opportunity to shift the way one sees each other. Through email, the screen provides a sense of safety that the outside world does not, which creates a bit more vulnerability. It makes it quite an interesting look at how two individuals can experience a dynamic so different depending on their setting, which this feature does so well. 

Pitting these two as rivals make their love story one that must overcome plenty for it to work as we see Joe’s success financially could lead to the downfall of Kathleen’s bookstore displaying big business taking down the small independent stores that give a community texture. This large difference between them on the matter does not only sit with their points of view but down to the core of their livelihood. Kathleen has more than just financials to worry about but rather this store also represents something she inherited from her family. Falling in love with the guy who could rip that away for the sole purpose of greed, presents a truly challenging relationship that would occur here. However, this film does such a great job in showing in the ways they communicate with each other that they have this connection that makes you root for them even if everything else around them screams that it will not work. This purely comes down to the script of Nora and Delia Ephron as they make the magic happen in the words they string together to make us fully believe in these two as individuals who can overcome these challenges and it helps us not doubt that even for a second. 

While falling into the manipulative territory in certain areas, You’ve Got Mail contains plenty of charm in creating such a beautiful duo here. In this film, we fall in love with the way they communicate through a screen and allow for the comedic elements to fill in the gaps as we get to the eventual conclusion. We have the winning pair of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan bringing all of the charm we can expect from them as actors. Feeling like a time capsule with the technology used at the time, it still does not lose much of its power in what it manages to communicate about technology and the way we communicate with and without it.