By 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 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.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
* Two new featurettes: Delivering You've Got Mail, You've Got Chemistry
* Commentary by director-cowriter Nora Ephron and producer Lauren Shuler Donner
* HBO First Look: A Conversation with Nora Ephron
* Interactive map tour: Discovering New York's Upper West Side
* Carole King musci video: Anyone at All
* Music-only audio track
