6.118/365: A-Z — Y

You’ve Got Mail, 1998

This is another favorite. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are two of my favorite actors, especially in romantic comedies. A lot of people dismiss this film because it’s so of the millennium. It came out a week before 1999 and it’s FULL of AOL at the time when we all had it and it was the new way to communicate. It was a Nora Ephron film and my Lord, she was the best.

Here’s the film’s Warner Bros. synopsis:

Strangers Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly live and work near each other on New York’s Upper West Side. Though involved in seemingly satisfying relationships, Joe and Kathleen meet anonymously in an Internet chat room and find themselves confiding their innermost secrets–everything except their identities. But back in the real world, the opening of Joe’s new Fox Books superstore a few blocks away from Kathleen’s little family-owned bookstore threatens their burgeoning romance.

Warner Brothers

What I love about this film is that it’s a remake of a remake. The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 film starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, which was based on the play, Parfumerie (1937) by Miklós László. They’re anonymous pen pals who hate each other in real life, working in a nice shop that sold nice gifts and all sorts of things. It’s wonderful that You’ve Got Mail uses “The Shop Around the Corner” as the name of Kathleen’s bookstore. The remake of that film is In the Good Old Summertime in 1949, this time it was a musical with Judy Garland and Van Johnson. Same plot, but it’s a music store. There were also to radio plays! So in total, that’s six versions of this story. It’s a classic.