Review of You've Got Mail (1998) by Hankwmardukas — 28 Nov 2018

For my inaugural review for The Puritan Post, my boss told me I was could write about any movie I wanted, since he doesn’t have money to actually pay for me to go to the movies. “You’ve Got Mail” is my favorite romantic comedy. I actually own three copies of the 1998 Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan classic on VHS (I don’t use DVDs or Blu Rays). The truth is that I adore this movie. I love “You’ve Got Mail”. I probably love “You’ve Got Mail” more than Seth Rogen’s character in “Undeclared”. Also, props if you got that reference. In all seriousness though, “You’ve Got Mail” is the perfect rom-com and a perfect love story. Here’s why.

“You’ve Got Mail” takes the best parts of “Sleepless in Seattle” and fixes the flaws of the second in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan Rom-Com trilogy. You might be asking “Hank, I thought ‘You’ve Got Mail’ was the second Hanks/Ryan rom-com”. Wrong, friendo. People always forget “Joe Versus The Volcano". The main reason “You’ve Got Mail” is better than “Sleepless in Seattle” is the plot. There is no real conflict in the latter film. Whereas in “You’ve Got Mail”, there’s an inherently compelling conflict: the two protagonists who are in love with each other are business rivals, but they don’t know it yet. This brilliant device could be attributed to the fact that “You’ve Got Mail” is a remake of the 1940 Jimmy Stewart film “The Shop Around the Corner”, but nevertheless, “You’ve Got Mail” takes this familiar concept and modernizes it in an original way that was incredibly ahead of its time.

Another area S.I.S. falls drastically short of Y.G.M. is in the characters. In “Sleepless in Seattle”, Meg Ryan is engaged to a super cool dude in Bill Pullman, whom she sneaks around on for some guy she’s “in love with” that she’s literally only ever heard on the radio. Whereas in the modern masterpiece, “You’ve Got Mail”, our heroine is dating a horribly self-involved, obnoxious dude, who is addicted to buying vintage typewriters in Greg Kinnear (who kills it in this flick by the way). “You’ve Got Mail” doubles down by giving Tom Hanks a similarly horrible girlfriend as well played by Parker Posey (who also kills it), instead of being a widower who may or may not be ready to move on as he was in “Sleepless in Seattle”. By giving us characters with horrible love lives, it is a lot easier to root for said characters to fall in love. The reality is, both movies are still classic romantic comedies. However, it is incredibly impressive that the writer and director who made both flicks was able to make such vast improvements the second time around. Well played, Nora Ephron, well played.

All “Sleepless in Seattle” comparisons aside, “You’ve Got Mail” was years ahead of its time in telling a technology-centric love story. And unlike most tech-centric rom-coms since then, it still holds up (looking at you ‘Must Love Dogs’). The bottom line is that if you haven’t seen “You’ve Got Mail”, you’re not only doing yourself a disservice as a moviegoer, but also as an American. “You’ve Got Mail” is a beautiful story about how two people with two totally different ideological viewpoints can fall in love because of who they are inside. If that isn’t a love story with relevance today, I don’t know what is. Oh, and Tom Hanks’ best friend in the movie is Dave Chappelle. How many other rom-coms have Dave Chappelle in them? Not enough, sadly. None, actually.