A romantic comedy, not very different from Sleepless in Seattle, actually. Same director (Nora Ephron), same actor, same actress, but also basically the same story, more or less. Only the details change, the soul is the same. Still, it’s not a negative comment, the movie is nice and lovely; not perfect but still enjoyable.
In this movie Meg Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, owner of ‘the shop around the corner’, a little bookshop specialized in books for children that was once under her mother’s care, before she passed away.
As it often happens, these recent years, a new, bigger bookstore opens near her, ‘stealing’ all her customers. First time she meets Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) she knows him only as a customer, but the second time she learns that he’s the owner of Fox and sons Books (or something like that) so she dislikes him for that and they start attacking each other whenever they meet.
Meanwhile, they both chat on the internet, and although they don’t know it we can see that they’re writing to each other, and connecting. Of course they will end up together, that’s no surprise in these romantic movies, that’s how it has to be, but it’s nice how it happens. When Kathleen arranges to meet her chat-friend, Joe and his friend Kevin (Dave Chappelle) see her and understand that the monster and the angel he keeps talking about are the same person. Joe doesn’t reveal to her that he’s the secret chat-friend, and for a while they run separate lives. She closes the shop (so soon? not even trying? I mean, she tried once, with some publicity, and that was it? Well, I suppose in a way it was the brave thing to do…) and they both break up with the people they were seeing. Joe because he doesn’t like her at all, and Kathleen because she understands that she likes Frank a lot (Greg Kinnear) but that she doesn’t love him. Lovely scene, they feel the same thing, they realize at the same time, so it’s not a bad break up but it turns into a chat between friends, I liked this.
Joe’s father (Dabney Coleman) breaks up with his latest young girl, and gives quite an image to Joe: every time he simply looks for another pretty young face, but has never felt real love (actually they don’t talk about Joe’s mother, but there’s no hint that it was any different).
Joe wants Kathleen, he’s more and more in love with her, and plans his strategy. He starts acting nice, meeting and talking and joking and making her laugh, hoping she’ll forgive him for putting her out of business, so when at the end he reveals himself to be her chat-friend, she’s happy about it, and even says she was badly hoping for it. The ending scene was nice, but it was better when I was younger, because back then I accepted everything as it was, while now I can’t help thinking: how could she be sure that Joe and him are the same person if Joe doesn’t say it clearly? Only because Joe showed up at her appointment with him? But she had told Joe all about it, hadn’t she? Or has she told Joe just the day and hour but not the place?? Anyway, it doesn’t matter much, not in this movie anyway, because the happy ending is what everyone’s expecting, even demanding, and it was a sweet one.
I liked the scene when after closing her store she ventured inside his, and found out that it was not such a bad place after all, there were people enjoying themselves, a lot of books, children playing… but I also agreed with her complaint that employees there don’t know anything about what they’re trying to sell. That’s not acceptable, they should be able somehow to help the customers. If they don’t know some authors, they should be able to find what the customer needs on a computer or something, or at least try their best…
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