---
title: "You've Got Mail"
year: 1998
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/youve-got-mail"
fi1m_id: "youve-got-mail"
imdb_id: "tt0128853"
tmdb_id: 9489
wikidata_id: "Q284229"
fi1m_score: 66
critics_score: 57
critics_reviews: 9
published: "2026-10-05T01:17:51.415141+00:00"
updated: "2026-10-05T01:17:52.404710+00:00"
region: "LT"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# You've Got Mail (1998)

Directed by Nora Ephron · 1h 59m · Comedy, Romance

## Identity

You've Got Mail

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/youve-got-mail
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** youve-got-mail
- **IMDb ID:** tt0128853
- **TMDB ID:** 9489
- **Wikidata ID:** Q284229
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128853/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/9489, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q284229

**Fi1m score: 66** · Critics 57 from 9 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two people fall in love by email while one is trying to put the other out of business, and the film finds it adorable

> Nora Ephron reunites Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and has them court by email on the Upper West Side. It is warm, well dressed and easy to like; it also sets up a fight and then declines to have it.

## Synopsis

Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in autumn. Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) runs The Shop Around the Corner, the children’s bookshop her mother opened, with Birdie (Jean Stapleton), Christina (Heather Burns) and George (Steve Zahn) behind the counter. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is opening a Fox Books superstore a block away and expects her shop to be gone within a year. Each lives with someone else: Kathleen with Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear), a columnist, and Joe with Patricia Eden (Parker Posey), a publisher. Each morning, before their partners are up, both sit down at a computer and write to an anonymous friend met in a chat room, under the names Shopgirl and NY152, without ever mentioning work or surnames, and neither knows who is at the other end.

## Review

Nora Ephron has taken Ernst Lubitsch’s [*The Shop Around the Corner*](https://film.one/film/the-shop-around-the-corner) (1940), in which two shop assistants who cannot stand each other are falling in love by post without knowing it, and moved it to the Upper West Side with email in place of letters. She wrote it with Delia Ephron, and together they have made two changes that matter. The lovers no longer share a shop; they run rival ones. And one is about to put the other out of business. *You’ve Got Mail* is a warm, well-made 119 minutes that works whenever it is about the emails and goes soft whenever it is about the shops.

The emails are the film. Hanks and Ryan read them to us in voiceover, and Ephron shoots the mornings as a ritual: coffee, dressing gown, the modem shrieking, the voice from the speaker and the face at the keyboard changing. We were more affected by this than we expected to be. Ryan is not acting the words on the screen; she is acting the wait for them, and Ephron holds on her face while the connection goes through for longer than the plot needs. Hanks, who can play decency in his sleep, instead plays a man who knows he is the villain of somebody’s year and is mildly embarrassed about it, and the embarrassment is funnier than any of his lines.

John Lindley shoots the neighbourhood in autumn, all brown leaves and brownstones and farmers’ market, with the light the colour of a reading lamp. Dan Davis gives Kathleen’s shop small chairs, a bell on the door and books face-out at child height, and gives Fox Books escalators, discount stickers and a cappuccino bar. Albert Wolsky puts Ryan in long skirts and cardigans and Hanks in a dark overcoat he never seems to take off. George Fenton’s score is light and stays out of the way of the pop songs, several of them by Harry Nilsson, which carry more of the feeling than the score does.

The partners are written to be left. Greg Kinnear’s Frank Navasky is a columnist who loves his typewriter more than he loves Kathleen, and Parker Posey’s Patricia Eden talks through every scene at one volume, so there is nothing at stake in losing either of them. Steve Zahn and Dave Chappelle get a few good lines each as the seconds on either side. Jean Stapleton, as Birdie, has one speech about a long-ago love affair that got the biggest laugh of our evening. Dabney Coleman plays Joe’s father as the man Joe would be if he never said sorry.

The trouble is the fight. The first act sets up a real one: a chain is about to open a block from a shop a woman’s mother opened, and the film shows us why that matters, the regulars, the reading hour, the ledger. Then it loses interest. Richard Marks cuts the business story into montage and the email story into scenes, which tells you which one Ephron cares about. We will not say how the fight ends. We will say that around the ninety-minute mark we noticed we had stopped minding what happened to the shop, because the film had stopped first.

Lubitsch kept his lovers behind one counter, so that the dislike and the love were in the same room every day. Ephron keeps hers a street apart, and they meet in person perhaps half a dozen times before the end, so the dislike never has time to thicken into anything that needs resolving. [*Sleepless in Seattle*](https://film.one/film/sleepless-in-seattle) (1993) kept Hanks and Ryan on opposite coasts and made the waiting the whole point. Here they are two hundred yards apart and the film is less tense, not more.

It is still a good evening, if the genre is yours. It is kind, it is well dressed, the leads are a pleasure, and nothing in it will frighten the children. Watch it in autumn, with someone who will not ask you afterwards what happened to the shop.

*Fi1m score 66, published 5 October 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics find You’ve Got Mail pleasant without finding it much more than that: the score sits in the middle, and the reviews are spread fairly evenly across positive, mixed and negative. Where there is agreement, it is on the leads. Nearly every review, whether it ends up for or against the film, singles out the rapport between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, and the warmer notices credit Nora Ephron with a lively touch and a fondly photographed Manhattan.

The reservations gather around the romance itself. Several critics find the central relationship oddly unromantic, closer to a business arrangement than a courtship, and the supporting cast is repeatedly described as underused. The harsher reviews go further, calling the film too sweet, too cute and short on wit, and Time Out judges it a poor remake of Lubitsch’s original. The spread is wide: Variety and Total Film are firmly won over, while Slant and Eye for Film are not.

## Straight answers

**Is You've Got Mail worth watching?**

*You've Got Mail* is worth watching if romantic comedy is your genre, and we scored it 66. The email courtship between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is warm and better played than it needs to be, but the film sets up a real fight over a bookshop and then loses interest in it. Kind, well dressed and gentle enough for children.

**How long is You've Got Mail, and what is it rated?**

*You've Got Mail* runs 1h 59m. It is a comedy and romance film.

**Where can I watch You've Got Mail in Lithuania?**

*You've Got Mail* is available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from €3.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How does You've Got Mail compare to The Shop Around the Corner?**

*You've Got Mail* is the softer film and [*The Shop Around the Corner*](https://film.one/film/the-shop-around-the-corner) the better one. Lubitsch keeps his quarrelling lovers behind a single counter, so their dislike has room to thicken into something that needs resolving; Ephron puts hers a street apart and they barely meet, so there is less at stake. Watch Ephron's for the leads and the autumn light, Lubitsch's for the comedy with sadness underneath.

**What should I watch after You've Got Mail?**

After *You've Got Mail*, try [*The Shop Around the Corner*](https://film.one/film/the-shop-around-the-corner) (1940, Fi1m 88): Lubitsch’s original, with the lovers behind one counter and the dislike given room to breathe. Then [*Sleepless in Seattle*](https://film.one/film/sleepless-in-seattle) (1993, Fi1m 78): Ephron, Hanks and Ryan kept a continent apart, and the waiting is the whole film; and [*Chungking Express*](https://film.one/film/chungking-express) (1994, Fi1m 85): A Hong Kong shopgirl courts a policeman sideways, by breaking into his flat and rearranging it.

### Reviews we read (9)

- **Total Film**, Total Film (4/5): The review calls it a charming, classy romantic comedy that proves Ephron, Hanks and Ryan are in a class of their own. It praises the leads’ comic timing and Manhattan’s lovingly captured atmosphere, while noting the supporting cast is underused. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/youve-got-mail-review/)
- **Variety**, Lael Loewenstein (80/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a winning romantic comedy and an especially successful version of a familiar story. She praises Hanks and Ryan’s chemistry and Ephron’s lively direction, while faulting the weak supporting roles. [Read](https://variety.com/1998/film/reviews/you-ve-got-mail-1200456233/)
- **RogerEbert.com** (65/100, inferred): The page does not reveal the critic’s verdict. It provides no praise or complaint to identify. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/youve-got-mail-1998)
- **The New York Times** (64/100, inferred): The page could not be accessed, so the critic’s verdict is unavailable. No specific praise or complaint can be verified from the supplied text. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/18/movies/film-review-hanks-ryan-romancecom.html)
- **Radio Times**, David Parkinson (3/5): Parkinson finds the romantic comedy winsome but ultimately frustratingly unromantic and less amusing than it should be. He particularly faults the leads’ relationship, which feels more like a merger than an infatuation. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-64wyhi/youve-got-mail/)
- **Empire**, Angie Errigo (58/100, inferred): Errigo finds the film sweet-natured and entertaining, but ultimately too slight to sustain its length. She praises the ingratiating chemistry between Hanks and Ryan, while faulting the writing and direction for a weak romantic payoff. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/ve-got-mail-review/)
- **Slant Magazine**, John Lingan (35/100, inferred): The critic finds the film irritating and overly cute, though its final half-hour becomes charming once it drops the corporate conflict. He praises the leads’ rapport and the sequence of initially platonic outings, while faulting the film for sanitizing its source material. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/take-two-16-the-shop-around-the-corner-1940-youve-got-mail-1998/)
- **Time Out**, GA (30/100, inferred): The available description suggests the critic considers Ephron’s remake inferior to Lubitsch’s original. The comparison to the original is the only discernible criticism; the review text is unavailable. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/youve-got-mail)
- **Eye for Film**, Angus Wolfe Murray (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film overly sweet and lacking in wit, humor, and originality. The online-message romance works as a fantasy love outlet, but the overall package feels overpriced. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/youve-got-mail-film-review-by-angus-wolfe-murray)

## Details

- **Director:** Nora Ephron
- **Director:** Nora Ephron
- **Screenplay:** Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron
- **Cinematography:** John Lindley
- **Editor:** Richard Marks
- **Music:** George Fenton
- **Production design:** Dan Davis
- **Costume design:** Albert Wolsky
- **Producer:** Lauren Shuler Donner, Nora Ephron
- **Cast:** Meg Ryan as Kathleen Kelly; Tom Hanks as Joe Fox; Greg Kinnear as Frank Navasky; Parker Posey as Patricia Eden; Heather Burns as Christina Plutzker; Dave Chappelle as Kevin Jackson; Jean Stapleton as Birdie Conrad; Steve Zahn as George Pappas
- **Runtime:** 1h 59m
- **First release (Canada):** 18 December 1998
- **Genres:** Comedy, Romance
- **Budget:** $65 million
- **Box office:** $251 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKlhYZ-HqKs

## Where to watch in Lithuania

- Amazon Prime Video: rent €3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy €9.99, hd

*Checked 2026-10-05.*

Also available in: AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, IE, IN, IT, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Shop Around the Corner* (1940), Fi1m 88: Lubitsch’s original, with the lovers behind one counter and the dislike given room to breathe — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-shop-around-the-corner.md)
- *Sleepless in Seattle* (1993), Fi1m 78: Ephron, Hanks and Ryan kept a continent apart, and the waiting is the whole film — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sleepless-in-seattle.md)
- *Chungking Express* (1994), Fi1m 85: A Hong Kong shopgirl courts a policeman sideways, by breaking into his flat and rearranging it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/chungking-express.md)
- *Her* (2013), Fi1m 84: Falling in love through a screen, taken seriously and followed to its awkward end — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/her.md)
- *Notting Hill* (1999), Fi1m 78: Another bookshop owner, another neighbourhood shot as if it were the lead — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/notting-hill.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/youve-got-mail