You've Got Mail Review

The film beautifully travels through a set of binaries. The binary of a relationship of love and of compromise,the binary of the personal and impersonal affairs in business deals,the binary of reading as a quest for knowledge and reading as a fanciful habit! These are implicitly presented,but for a sensitive viewer,they are major concerns which have been dealt with care.

Nowadays chatting with a stranger anonymously, and forming a correspondence through letters/Mail is an ancient thing. The film is set in the time when Mail and online chatrooms were a new concept,and therefore exciting. Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) runs her mother's bookstore which has the flavour of a quaint,dimly lit store,where few regular customers walk in and reminisce old days! Joe Fox(Tom Hanks) is the son of a millionaire who opens a coming-of-age bookstore where the cafeteria attracts people more than the books. Both Kathleen and Joe are in the middle of unhappy relationships and they resort to online chatting to find solace. But they do so anonymously,and they develop a beautiful friendship! The main surprise comes when Hank's company set their store right across the street where the little bookstore is situated and Kathleen''s business suffers a terrible setback! After that,their hidden virtual identities come to the fore,and their friendship has to suffer a blow!

The plot doesn't offer anything new,and neither is the love-story a dollop of saccharine! The journey is shown beautifully but is partly predictable-but the writers add some sophistication by intertwining literary references. What wins you over is the leading duo!