You've got mail is possibly the most romanticized open love letter to New York. Could it be that Ms. Ephron surpasses even Woody Allen's Annie Hall with oozing sentimentality/
(I mean hey - H & H Bagels? Zabor's ?)
>the coins in the jar are for charity,
<the coins in the tray are for sharing
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/4sc14h/youve_got_mail_is_one_of_the_most_accurate/
So I never had the fortune of watching this movie until my fiancee showed it to me on Saturday. While it was surprising in many ways (including how easily the characters shrugged off internet infidelity) I think the most shocking was how strongly I was reminded of pre-9/11 life. It's not just the nostalgia factor of dial-up or AOL screen names or the concept of chatrooms (which I never realized completely disappeared). It was that the Yuppie lifestyle was in full-speed-ahead mode. Starbucks was still trendy; that little bit about defining self through the coffee you order? That was true. Hipsters have absolutely nothing on the 1990's high-powered executive. Back then, Starbucks introduced the very idea of your coffee being a part of identity Now we're so saturated with personal choice that no one cares what monks picked your coffee beans from which mountain range under what cycle of the moon. It's almost passe now.share
There was no weary cynicism towards capitalism. In fact, it reads like a love letter penned to it. The executive gets the girl in the end. He steals her from a pointedly leftist columnist who in turn finds HIMself attracted to a philanthropist that is part of the New York bourgeois. This is after Hanks shuts down a shop that was her family's business so his father's superstore can cut a tiny sliver more profit. If that plot doesn't seem like a Libertarian fantasy, I don't know what does.
It just struck me as odd that this was life only 15 years ago. While technology has obviously advanced I think the culture of American life has changed as much, if not more.
1998's "You've Got Mail" is the best film that truly exemplifies the ideals and prosperity of the 90s.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6s28u3/1998s_youve_got_mail_is_the_best_film_that_truly/
In fact, I'd argue that it's probably one of the most "90s" movies from the 90s.share
The protagonists are played by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the third film of the Hanks/Ryan trilogy of the 1990s. The two starred opposite each other in two other romantic comedies, Joe vs. the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).
The film is about two rich people in Manhattan. One of them runs an independent bookstore and the other is the wealthy son of a dynasty of bookstore owners. The "bad guy" that Meg Ryan is dating at the time is a "leftist" newspaper editor. This is a film where the good guy that gets the girl is a rich business magnate. Try pushing a story like that in 2017.
The bulk of the film is conversations done over e-mail on AOL Version 4.0. This is just three years before America Online would hit its peak user base, before it would decline into obscurity, so at this point it was being used by over 20 million people.
Riding the Clinton wave of prosperity, is there anything more 90s than this?