To kick off the holiday season we start with the feel-good romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail (1998) directed by Nora Ephron. It is inspired by the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László which had earlier been adapted in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime directed by Robert Z Leonard and Buster Keaton. It marks the third pairing of Hanks and Ryan who previously co-starred in Joe Versus the Volcano and Sleepless in Seattle, the latter directed by Ephron.Struggling boutique bookseller Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) hates Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), the owner of the corporate Fox Books chain store that just moved in across the street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. When they meet online, however, they begin an intense and anonymous Internet romance, oblivious of each other's true identity. Eventually Joe learns that the enchanting woman he's involved with is actually his business rival. He must now struggle to reconcile his real-life dislike for her with the cyber love he's come to feel.
