You've Got Mail

Someone you pass on the street may already be the love of your life.
You've Got Mail (1998)
Timing: 1:59 (119 min)
7/10
328 879
—
no scores
6.7/10
3754
6.7/10
245000
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Release date
Country
Genre
Budget
$65 000 000
Revenue
$250 821 495
Director
Scenario
Producer
Lauren Shuler Donner, Nora Ephron, G. Mac Brown, Delia Ephron, Julie Durk
Operator
John Lindley
Composer
George Fenton
Artist
Dan Davis
Audition
Editing
Richard Marks
All team (65)

Short description

Kathleen Kelly runs a small children's bookshop in New York that she inherited from her mother, and it is the centre of her working life. Joe Fox is the heir to a chain of large book superstores, and his company opens a new branch near her shop, where lower prices threaten to drive her out of business. The two meet and clash in person without warmth, yet they are also corresponding anonymously online, each confiding in a stranger they have never seen.

Nora Ephron directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Delia Ephron, and the film sits in the middle of her directing career, arriving after Sleepless in Seattle and Mixed Nuts and before later titles such as Lucky Numbers and Julie & Julia. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks lead the cast as Kathleen and Joe, with Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Heather Burns and Dave Chappelle in supporting roles.

Made for a substantial studio budget, the film took far more than that back at the box office worldwide. Audiences rate it identically on IMDb and TMDB, both at 6.7 out of 10, while the critics' rating stands slightly higher at 6.9 from 88 reviews. The film is set in New York, among bookshops and the routines of two people who do not realise how closely their lives overlap.

What's left behind the scenes

  • The name Birdie Conrad is a reversed spelling of Conrad Birdie, the hero of the famous Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie" (1963).
  • The email correspondence between Joe (played by Tom Hanks) and Kathleen (played by Meg Ryan) was available on the film's official website, which Warner Bros. maintained until 2018.
  • New York previews of the film took place at 'Lincoln Square 13 & IMAX' – the very same theater (the same building, the same 'hall') that Meg Ryan and Greg Kinnear went to see their movie.
  • The New York previews of the film took place at Lincoln Square 13—the same cinema and the same theater that Meg Ryan and Greg Kinnear visited in the movie.
  • The email correspondence between the main characters was available on the official website of the film, which Warner Bros. maintained until 2018.
  • In the scene where Tom Hanks' character makes martinis on a yacht, he can be seen dropping olives into both glasses; the camera then cuts to Dabney Coleman, and when it returns to Hanks, he puts another olive into the second glass.
  • The characters used AOL software to connect to the internet. They both used version 4.0, which was in beta at the time of filming.

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