Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan
Hanks, playing the owner of a giant bookstore chain in the irresistibly appealing You've Got Mail, is opening a new store in Manhattan, and his manager is worried about hostile neighborhood reaction. "They're going to hate us in the beginning," Hanks predicts, "but we will get 'em in the end."
Get 'em he does. And Ryan (see page 104) and us too. That's because despite its cyberspace trappings—Hanks and Ryan are e-mail buddies, although neither knows the other's true identity—Mail is a pitch-perfect, old-fashioned romantic comedy. As such, the film has to come up with a reason for its two tremendously likable leads to loathe each other right up until the moment they realize this is true love. In Mail, it's business that keeps them apart: Ryan owns a tiny children's bookshop that is threatened by Hanks's discount superstore.
While director Nora Ephron {Sleepless in Seattle), who cowrote Mail's polished script with her sister Delia, sticks to the framework of The Shop Around the Corner, the 1940 classic with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan on which Mail is based, she introduces valuable characters (Parker Posey as Hanks's hyper girlfriend and Greg Kinnear as Ryan's smug beau). And she neatly updates the action with references to The Godfather ("The sum of all wisdom," claims Hanks) and Starbucks. (PG)
Bottom Line: Hanks plus Ryan, together again, adds up to a swell time.
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