'You've Got Mail', a romantic story that starts in chatroom

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): Ah, online romance. There's nothing like a man and a woman falling for each other without really knowing what the person looks like. For all they know, the e-mail partner could actually be a pervert with a knack for sweet words claiming to be 30 years or younger, and they'd still be madly in love.

Of course, there is no such scandal in You've Got Mail. The two virtual lovebirds here are Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, two mentally stable, good looking people played by two of Hollywood's funniest, good-looking actors, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Ever since they discovered each other in a chatroom, they've been exchanging stories and providing ears via the net, knowing one another by their online names only, ny152 and shopgirl. As the audience can see, they seem right for each other. But the e-mail correspondence is a surreptitious affair for them: Joe and Kathleen keep their relationship secret from their actual live-in companions; Joe from his aggressive book-publisher girlfriend, Patricia (Parker Posey), and Kathleen from her narcissistic literary critic boyfriend, Frank (Greg Kinnear).

Director-writer Nora Ephron's romantic comedies so far have always featured a couple who takes a long time to realize they are meant for each other, or even to simply know each other. Harry and Sally in When Harry Met Sally spend years being friends before acknowledging their love for each other, the two journalists in Michael have to go through an assignment with a disgusting angel before doing the same, and the couple in Sleepless in Seattle don't even meet until the end of the movie. Ephron, with her cowriter and sister Delia Ephron (who collaborated with her on This is My Life and Michael), indicates the point early in the opening scenes of You've Got Mail, with Joe and Kathleen, who happen to live in the same neighborhood, walking from their apartments to work. They're so near to each other, but unaware that they actually know each other.

A predictable plot would have had Joe and Kathleen's journey from the chatroom to finally meeting in person. But the Ephrons threw in a conflict: Joe and Kathleen do meet, but they hate each other's guts. For Joe is the inheritor of the conglomerate Fox Books Inc., and he is opening a massive superstore in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Kathleen, meanwhile, is the owner of the modest, minuscule children's bookstore The Shop Around the Corner, which is located in the vicinity and comes under threat of extinction by the giant bookstore chain's expansion.

The film becomes ironic when Kathleen, distraught by her store's dropping sales following the establishment of the new Fox store, seeks help from her online friend. And Joe, finding out that "shopgirl" is in some business trouble, lends some advice, urging her to attack the rival. "It's nothing personal," he types, not knowing what he is his getting himself into, "it's business."

And Joe gets a taste of his own medicine. He is shocked when he discovers Kathleen is going on a public relations campaign, using the media to make him the bad guy, the "big bad wolf" who is merciless crushes small competitors, in this case the friendly, four-decade-old Shop Around the Corner.

The Ephrons play the comedy of irony well, having Joe and Kathleen fight each other by day, and turn to each other, through their PCs, by night. It's the plot retained from The Shop Around the Corner minus the e-mail, of course, the 1940 film this movie is adapted from. You've Got Mail becomes its 1990s updated version, mixing elements of the original story with the Internet and new-age family values. One scene has Joe mistaken as the father of the two small children he is with.

It turns out that the little boy is his father's child from a new, younger wife, and the little girl is his grandfather's daughter, making her Joe's aunt. "Yes, we're the all-American family," Joe says.

This film largely boasts the comedic charisma of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who are reunited for the third time after Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

Incidentally, this also marks their comeback into feel-good comedy territory, after their five-year venture into the nonfarcical realm (Hanks in Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan; Ryan in Flesh and Bone, When a Man Loves a Woman, Restoration, Courage Under Fire and Addicted to Love). And much to the expectations of their fans, here they revert to their old antics.

Hanks is always the charming and funny Mr. Nice Guy, even if he plays the good bad guy. It is only fitting that the man dubbed by some critics as the Jimmy Stewart of the 1990s should play the role Stewart played almost half a century ago. Meanwhile, Ryan is again the perky naive female with the wide-eyed schoolgirl stare. But when she is hurt she can really sting, like when she tells Joe he is a person without compassion, that he is "just a suit".

Naturally, as all Hollywood products go, these two cannot go on being hostile to each other, and not knowing who each other actually is. But the moment the effective comedy of irony stops, the movie goes into anticlimactic tedium. Joe finds out first who shopgirl is; he retracts from his e-mail correspondence with her for a short while, but realizes he is in love with her. He proceeds to e-mail the clueless Kathleen, while by day he sees her, persuading her to encounter the mystery man. This part of the film is a yawn as it is disturbing: the Ephrons actually let Kathleen be the dumb female manipulated by the cheeky male all the way to the final scene at the park cheesily coated by Harry Nilsson's rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. After Sleepless and this, who knows what other old movies the Ephrons will remake into disappointing mush.