In 1990s Hollywood took rather ambiguous view of rapidly developing information technology. While film-makers wholeheartedly adopted CGI as compensation for their own creative shortcomings, PCs, virtual reality and Internet in Hollywood films were portrayed as something sinister and inhuman. Most of those films belonged to horror and thriller genres. One of the first to use Internet as a plot device in romantic comedy was You've Got Mail, directed in 1998 by Nora Ephron.
The script by Nora Ephron and her sister Delia is partially inspired by 1940 classic Hollywood comedy A Shop Around the Corner. The plot is set in modern day New York where increasing number of people are using Internet to enhance their social life in chat rooms. One of them is Kathleen Kelly (played by Meg Ryan), owner of small children's bookstore that she had inherited from her parents, now engaged in heroic struggle to keep it as some kind of local landmark. Joe Fox III (played by Tom Hanks) has just taken over Fox Books, major publishing chain that tries to establish total market domination by buying book stores in New York. In real life, Joe and Kathleen are bitter business rivals. But on the Internet they use pseudonyms "NY152" and "Shopgirl", become best friends and their relationship later evolves into something more. They even begin to give each other advice how to beat their real-life rivals, blissfully unaware of each other's identities.
You've Got Mail was supposed to be truly great romantic comedy. Use of new Internet technology was one of more inventive "high concepts". Two main stars - Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan – have already shown great mutual chemistry in previous films, one of them being directed by Nora Ephron. But many of those who endured two hours of You've Got Mail had their high expectations quashed in the end. Ephron tried too hard to play safe - the script was injected with unbearable quantities of sappiness and cheap sentimentality while humour was purged of any subversive elements.
Sterility of film's humour is matched with absence of drama. Ephron tries to spice the plot by having one of on-line lovers discovering the secret long before the end of film. This was the fatal flaw of You've Got Mail. The audience roots for Joe and Kelly to finally open their eyes and get together; the obstacles thrown in their path are those that make at least one of lovers utterly dislikeable and unworthy of such happy conclusion. Not even the great talents of Hanks and Ryan can wash away the bitter taste of betrayal and manipulation. To make things worse, Ephron uses snail-like pace thus making some completely unnecessary and formulaic characters - like Joe's and Kathleen's "significant others" - too obvious and thus annoying to the audience. You've Got Mail shows that Hollywood's fairytale treatment of Internet can produce films as bad as those fuelled by technophobia.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on October 7th 2004)
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