You've Got Mail

1998

Director: Nora Ephron

Distributor: Warner Brothers

Key Elements: Story – Characters – Lines

My Review:

Hey Look, Hollywood! It’s a movie that uses good writing, NOT a sex scene, to communicate the depth of a relationship. To rely on sex to communicate a relationship is both lazy and sloppy. The greatest thing about this movie is that it proves that a romantic story can be told without sex.

Indeed, we love these characters because of how well developed they are, and how great the chemistry is between them. It’s the authenticity – the purity – of the relationship that makes this a great movie.

Clip:



Quotes:

• Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
• The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.
• We're going to sell them cheap books and legal addictive stimulants. In the meantime, we'll just put up a big sign: "Coming soon, a FoxBooks superstore and the end of civilization as you know it."
• Have you ever become the worst version of yourself. That a pandora's box of all the hateful things, your spite, your arrogance, your condecension has sprung open?
• When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.
• Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life. Well, not small, but valuable. And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.
• Kevin this is possibley the most adorable creature I've ever been in contact with and if she turns out to be as good looking as a mailbox, I would be crazy enough to turn my life upside down and marry her.
• I always take a relationship to the next level. If that works out, I take it to the next level after that, until I finally reach that level when it becomes absolutely necessary for me to leave.
• ...but no one will remember you. And maybe no one will remember me either, but there are plenty of people who remember my mother, and they thought she was fine, and they thought her store was something special. You are nothing but a suit.
• What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's *personal* to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway? …Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.
• You've got mail.
  - Yes.
  Three very powerful words.
  - Yes.
• If I hadn't been FoxBooks and you hadn't been the Shop Around the Corner... and you and I had, just you know, met... Yeah. I would have asked for your phone number and I wouldn't have been able to wait 24 hours before calling and asking, "How about coffee, drinks, dinner, a movie, for as long as we both shall live?" …And you and I would have never been at war. And the only things we would've fought about would be what video to rent on Saturday night.
• …Well let me ask you something. How can you forgive this guy for standing you up and not forgive me for this tiny little thing like putting you out of business. …Oh how I wish you would.
• The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something. But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.
• I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.

Stills: