"Struggling boutique bookseller Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) hates Joe Fox (Tom Hanks), the owner of a corporate Foxbooks chain store that just moved in across the street. 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."
What's different
This classic 90s rom-com can't rightly be called a Pride and Prejudice adaptation, but it openly encourages viewers to draw comparisons between the two love stories. P&P is Kathleen's favorite book; Joe struggles to get through it. It's the book Kathleen takes to the cafe to meet Joe (before she knows it's Joe), paired with a red rose so he'll know it's her. And Joe compares Kathleen to Elizabeth when he accuses her of being too proud to forgive him.
How similar is Joe and Kathleen's relationship to Darcy and Elizabeth's? The basic structure of the two relationships are the same: girl meets boy, girl hates boy, boy likes girl, girl rejects boy, girl realizes boy isn't so bad after all, girl starts to like boy, girl and boy end up together. But the similarities don't continue very far from there. There's also one glaring opposite in their stories: Darcy saves Elizabeth, in a way, by saving her family from disgrace; Joe, on the other hand, hurts Kathleen by literally putting her out of business. Not a very Darcy move.
While the specific parallels between Darcy/Elizabeth and Joe/Kathleen are few, the two relationships do have a similar vibe at times. In the cafe scene, Kathleen is waiting to meet her mystery man, but then her least favorite person, Joe Fox, shows up and starts bugging her. Joe has just realized that the woman he loves online and the woman in hates in real life are the same person. He's nice to Kathleen and tries to get her to get to know him as a person, not just as a business rival, but she's too prejudiced to give him a chance. Remind you of anyone? After this scene, though, Joe tells his friend that Kathleen is "a real bitch." Perhaps his pride was wounded?
Later, Kathleen writes in an email to Joe (who she doesn't know is Joe) that she regrets the awful things she said in the cafe. Joe (who knows that she's talking about him) tells her that she was provoked and that he deserved everything she said to him. In P&P, Lizzie feels regret for the things she said to Darcy when she rejected him, but Darcy doesn't know that she regrets it. Darcy realizes that her insults were justified and that he hasn't been irreproachable.
There's one scene in particular that I think correlates directly to a scene in P&P. After Kathleen decides to close her store, she goes into Fox Books for the first time, on a whim. The camera pans across browsing customers, display tables of books, the busy coffee bar, and the large store directory. Kathleen makes her way upstairs to the children's section, where she sits on a tiny chair and looks around wistfully. This scene reminds me strongly of Elizabeth visiting Pemberley. Both women find themselves unexpectedly, but not unwillingly, exploring the domain of the man they rejected. Joe even sees Kathleen there, but unlike Darcy, he doesn't approach her or make his presence known.
It's a good thing You've Got Mail never outright claims to be a P&P adaptation because can you have Pride and Prejudice without a Wickham? I don't think so. Kathleen and Joe are both in relationships with other people for most of the movie, but neither of those characters have any Wickham-like characteristics. If you're looking for someone to judge in this movie, Kathleen and Joe themselves are the most morally bankrupt: they're basically having an emotional affair over the internet, which means they're cheating on their significant others. Their soon-to-be exes are squeaky clean in comparison.
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| Joe clearly agrees with me on the pointless pride/prejudice dichotomy. |
How similar is Joe and Kathleen's relationship to Darcy and Elizabeth's? The basic structure of the two relationships are the same: girl meets boy, girl hates boy, boy likes girl, girl rejects boy, girl realizes boy isn't so bad after all, girl starts to like boy, girl and boy end up together. But the similarities don't continue very far from there. There's also one glaring opposite in their stories: Darcy saves Elizabeth, in a way, by saving her family from disgrace; Joe, on the other hand, hurts Kathleen by literally putting her out of business. Not a very Darcy move.
While the specific parallels between Darcy/Elizabeth and Joe/Kathleen are few, the two relationships do have a similar vibe at times. In the cafe scene, Kathleen is waiting to meet her mystery man, but then her least favorite person, Joe Fox, shows up and starts bugging her. Joe has just realized that the woman he loves online and the woman in hates in real life are the same person. He's nice to Kathleen and tries to get her to get to know him as a person, not just as a business rival, but she's too prejudiced to give him a chance. Remind you of anyone? After this scene, though, Joe tells his friend that Kathleen is "a real bitch." Perhaps his pride was wounded?
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| Another very un-Darcy move. |
Later, Kathleen writes in an email to Joe (who she doesn't know is Joe) that she regrets the awful things she said in the cafe. Joe (who knows that she's talking about him) tells her that she was provoked and that he deserved everything she said to him. In P&P, Lizzie feels regret for the things she said to Darcy when she rejected him, but Darcy doesn't know that she regrets it. Darcy realizes that her insults were justified and that he hasn't been irreproachable.
There's one scene in particular that I think correlates directly to a scene in P&P. After Kathleen decides to close her store, she goes into Fox Books for the first time, on a whim. The camera pans across browsing customers, display tables of books, the busy coffee bar, and the large store directory. Kathleen makes her way upstairs to the children's section, where she sits on a tiny chair and looks around wistfully. This scene reminds me strongly of Elizabeth visiting Pemberley. Both women find themselves unexpectedly, but not unwillingly, exploring the domain of the man they rejected. Joe even sees Kathleen there, but unlike Darcy, he doesn't approach her or make his presence known.
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| He's a lurker. |
It's a good thing You've Got Mail never outright claims to be a P&P adaptation because can you have Pride and Prejudice without a Wickham? I don't think so. Kathleen and Joe are both in relationships with other people for most of the movie, but neither of those characters have any Wickham-like characteristics. If you're looking for someone to judge in this movie, Kathleen and Joe themselves are the most morally bankrupt: they're basically having an emotional affair over the internet, which means they're cheating on their significant others. Their soon-to-be exes are squeaky clean in comparison.
What I liked
Strangely enough, the morally ambiguous is-it-cheating-or-is-it-not sort of infidelity is the thing I relate to the most in this movie. I spent an unseemly amount of time in early 2000s internet chat rooms, tying up the family phone line with the dial-up connection, and I had an online romantic relationship at the same time that I had a real life boyfriend. The lines were a little blurrier back then, and in the early internet, it was easy to convince yourself that what happened online wasn't real and therefore didn't count. However, I was also a child, not a grown-ass adult who ought to know better. So while I relate, I do still judge Kathleen and Joe for the ways they devalue their real life relationships and betray their partners.
This movie inspires a lot of early internet nostalgia, and I love it all. The scene where Kathleen's coworkers speculate that her online lover might be a serial killer — *chef's kiss*.
While I don't like the way Kathleen treats her boyfriend Frank, I do like his character for the most part. I appreciate that he isn't horrible; he's actually a pretty normal boyfriend. If this movie were remade today, I can easily see how he would be turned into a caricature of self-important left-wing hipsterdom, but thankfully that stereotype hadn't been invented yet in the 90s. Kathleen and Frank have some issues, but I don't think there's anything wrong with their relationship that better communication and commitment couldn't fix. Their biggest problem is a lack of investment in each other, which is so #relatable.
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| Friends don't let friends get catfished by serial killers. |
While I don't like the way Kathleen treats her boyfriend Frank, I do like his character for the most part. I appreciate that he isn't horrible; he's actually a pretty normal boyfriend. If this movie were remade today, I can easily see how he would be turned into a caricature of self-important left-wing hipsterdom, but thankfully that stereotype hadn't been invented yet in the 90s. Kathleen and Frank have some issues, but I don't think there's anything wrong with their relationship that better communication and commitment couldn't fix. Their biggest problem is a lack of investment in each other, which is so #relatable.
What I disliked
On the subject of Frank and Kathleen's relationship, one thing I did not like was their breakup. Before Kathleen decides to do anything about her IRL relationship, Frank lets her off the hook by dumping her first. But he barely has time to sit her down and look serious before Kathleen, in her excitement and relief, guesses what he's going to say. They're able to skip the whole painful breakup conversation and jump right to being close friends, hanging out and talking about the people they want to date instead — the TV anchorwoman that Frank is leaving her for and Kathleen's mysterious internet stranger. Pretty much the best case scenario for any breakup, right? And that's my problem, it feels way too easy.
No one gets hurt by Kathleen's infidelity, so it's not a big deal, right? Heck, Frank leaves her for another woman, so they're practically even! I recognize the necessity of this ridiculous scenario for keeping the rom-com fun and lightheared; having to acknowledge that Kathleen and Joe's actions might hurt other people would detract from the viewer's ability to enjoy their romance. I recognize it, but I'm not happy about it.
Joe's relationship with his girlfriend Patricia is another negative for me. We see a lot less of their relationship than we do of Kathleen and Frank's, and the movie pretty blatantly tries to paint Patricia as self-absorbed and therefore unworthy of Joe. The attempt fails for me, though. Patricia isn't as redeemable as Frank, but she's really not that bad. She does seem self-absorbed, but it's not like Joe is trying to open up or share his life with her. You can't expect people to notice what you're doing your best to hide, no matter what rom-coms would have us believe. Joe and Patricia seem more like roommates than lovers, and they're both to blame for how they got there.
Continuing the movie's theme of glossing over difficult human emotions, I also take issue with how Kathleen handles closing her shop. Her loss is barely acknowledged, and she recovers surprisingly quickly from the heartbreak of shutting down the store that her mother opened, the store that she herself grew up in, which was her livelihood for her entire adult life and where her strongest friendships were forged. The complicated grief that she surely experiences is all but ignored. Weirdly, Kathleen does hole up in her apartment for a while, but instead of attributing this to the grieving process, it's a frickin head cold.
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| "Hooray, now I won't be held accountable for my actions!" |
No one gets hurt by Kathleen's infidelity, so it's not a big deal, right? Heck, Frank leaves her for another woman, so they're practically even! I recognize the necessity of this ridiculous scenario for keeping the rom-com fun and lightheared; having to acknowledge that Kathleen and Joe's actions might hurt other people would detract from the viewer's ability to enjoy their romance. I recognize it, but I'm not happy about it.
Joe's relationship with his girlfriend Patricia is another negative for me. We see a lot less of their relationship than we do of Kathleen and Frank's, and the movie pretty blatantly tries to paint Patricia as self-absorbed and therefore unworthy of Joe. The attempt fails for me, though. Patricia isn't as redeemable as Frank, but she's really not that bad. She does seem self-absorbed, but it's not like Joe is trying to open up or share his life with her. You can't expect people to notice what you're doing your best to hide, no matter what rom-coms would have us believe. Joe and Patricia seem more like roommates than lovers, and they're both to blame for how they got there.
Continuing the movie's theme of glossing over difficult human emotions, I also take issue with how Kathleen handles closing her shop. Her loss is barely acknowledged, and she recovers surprisingly quickly from the heartbreak of shutting down the store that her mother opened, the store that she herself grew up in, which was her livelihood for her entire adult life and where her strongest friendships were forged. The complicated grief that she surely experiences is all but ignored. Weirdly, Kathleen does hole up in her apartment for a while, but instead of attributing this to the grieving process, it's a frickin head cold.
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| Yeah, sick of having her grief be ignored! |
Adaptation wish list
- Is Elizabeth sassy? — No.
- Is Elizabeth silly? — Yes.
- Does Darcy undergo real and significant change after being rejected? — Yeah, but it's pretty minor stuff.
- Are Darcy and Elizabeth each guilty of both pride and prejudice? — The words are tossed around, but it's not clear where they land.
This is a classic romantic comedy for good reason. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are great together, as everyone knows, and the story works well as long as you don't examine it too closely (as with all rom-coms). Watching it in the present, it brings back memories of the early internet, which only adds to the movie's charm. Any criticism I have of You've Got Mail really applies to the whole genre and isn't specific to this particular iteration of familiar themes and tropes. As for the Pride and Prejudice connection, Kathleen and Joe can't hold a candle to the drama and romance of Lizzie and Darcy. They're pretty good in their own right, though, and definitely worth spending a couple of hours with.
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