- Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language: English.
- Actors: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher, Bruno Kirby, Steven Ford
- Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
- Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1.
Neigborhood bookstore rivals unwittingly become e-mail pen pals in this charming remake of The Shop Around the CornerBy now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In
You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made
Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do actually meet face to face early on, but
Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its ! romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot.
The underlying narrative is an even more old-fashioned romantic pas de deux that is casually hooked to a newfangled device. The script, cowritten by the director and her sister, Delia Ephron, updates and relocates the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner, to contemporary Manhattan, where Joe Fox (Hanks) is a cheerfully rapacious merchant whose chain of book superstores is gobbling up smaller, more specialized shops such as the children's bookstore owned by Kathleen Kelly (Ryan). Their lives run in close parallel in the same idealized neighborhood, yet they first meet anonymously, online, where they gradually nurture a warm, even intimate correspondence. As they begin to wonder whether this e-mail flirtation might lead them to be soul mates, however, they meet and clash over their colliding business fortunes.
It's no small testament to the two stars that we wind up liking and caring about them de! spite the inevitable (and highly manipulative) arc of the plot! . Althou gh their chemistry transcended the consciously improbable romantic premise of Sleepless, enabling director Ephron to attain a kind of amorous soufflé, this time around there's a slow leak that considerably deflates the affair. Less credulous viewers will challenge Joe's logic in prolonging the concealment of his online identity from Kathleen, and may shake their heads at Ephron's reinvention of Manhattan as a spotless, sun-dappled wonderland where everybody lives in million-dollar apartments and color coordinates their wardrobes for cocktail parties. --Sam SutherlandBy now, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have amassed such a fund of goodwill with moviegoers that any new onscreen pairing brings nearly reflexive smiles. In You've Got Mail, the quintessential boy and girl next door repeat the tentative romantic crescendo that made Sleepless in Seattle, writer-director Nora Ephron's previous excursion with the duo, a massive hit. The prospective couple do act! ually meet face to face early on, but Mail otherwise repeats the earlier feature's gentle, extended tease of saving its romantic resolution until the final, gauzy shot.
The underlying narrative is an even more old-fashioned romantic pas de deux that is casually hooked to a newfangled device. The script, cowritten by the director and her sister, Delia Ephron, updates and relocates the Ernst Lubitsch classic, The Shop Around the Corner, to contemporary Manhattan, where Joe Fox (Hanks) is a cheerfully rapacious merchant whose chain of book superstores is gobbling up smaller, more specialized shops such as the children's bookstore owned by Kathleen Kelly (Ryan). Their lives run in close parallel in the same idealized neighborhood, yet they first meet anonymously, online, where they gradually nurture a warm, even intimate correspondence. As they begin to wonder whether this e-mail flirtation might lead them to be soul mates, however, they meet and clash over the! ir colliding business fortunes.
It's no small testament to ! the two stars that we wind up liking and caring about them despite the inevitable (and highly manipulative) arc of the plot. Although their chemistry transcended the consciously improbable romantic premise of Sleepless, enabling director Ephron to attain a kind of amorous soufflé, this time around there's a slow leak that considerably deflates the affair. Less credulous viewers will challenge Joe's logic in prolonging the concealment of his online identity from Kathleen, and may shake their heads at Ephron's reinvention of Manhattan as a spotless, sun-dappled wonderland where everybody lives in million-dollar apartments and color coordinates their wardrobes for cocktail parties. --Sam Sutherland"Brimming over with style, intelligence and flashing wit" (Rolling Stone), this "splendid and irresistible" (Los Angeles Times) film from director Rob Reiner(American President is one of the best-loved romantic comedies of all time. Featuring dazzling performances from Meg Ryan! , Billy Crystal, Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby, exceptional music from Harry Connick Jr., and an OscarÂ(r)-nominated* screenplay by Nora Ephron, When Harry Met Sally is an "explosively funny" commentary on friendship, courtships - and other hardships - of the modern age (Newsweek)! Will sex ruin a perfect relationship between a man and a woman? that's what Harry (Crystal) and Sally (Ryan) debate during their travels from Chicago to New York. And eleven years and later, they're still no closer to finding the answer. Will these two best friends ever accept that they're meant for each other...or will they continue to deny the attraction that's existed since the first moment When Harry Met Sally? *1989Nora Ephron wrote the brisk screenplay for this 1989 romantic comedy, director Rob Reiner made a nicely glossy New York story (very much in a Woody Allen vein) out of it, and Billy Crystal's unstoppable charm made it something really special. Crystal and Meg Ryan play longtime ! platonic friends who keep dancing around their deeper feelings! for one another, and Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are their respective pals who fall in love and get married. Ryan doesn't get a lot of funny material, but her performance is typically alive and intuitive, and she more than holds her own with Crystal's comic motor mouth and sweet sentimentality. Reiner is on comfortable ground, liberated from the burden of making serious statements in the lead-footed manner of subsequent features. --Tom Keogh
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