You've Got Mail's got growth

In the pantheon of romantic comedies, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail stand as a holy triumvirate. Thank Nora Ephron, who either co-wrote or directed all three genre-defining movies with her trademark approach of scarce plotting, balanced stories (clock each male and female lead’s screen times, I’d bet they all come out nearly equal) and nimble shifting between male and female perspectives, whether it's Tom Hanks rolling his eyes at Rita Wilson’s weakness for the Cary Grant classic An Affair to Remember in Sleepless In Seattle or Meg Ryan rolling her eyes at Tom Hanks's obsession with The Godfather in You've Got Mail. (Ephron's characters have an affinity for classic movies.)

But Ephron also grew to abandon the long monologues in When Harry Met Sally and fairytale contrivances in Sleepless in Seattle in favor of a down-to-earth story in You've Got Mail that strikes at the essence of romance: people overcoming great obstacles to be together. In Sleepless in Seattle it's distance, but in You’ve Got Mail Hanks’s Joe Fox and Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly face something far more daunting: they don't like each other. The only problem is they’re also in love (anonymously over the Internet, in the one big coincidence all stories are allowed), setting off a two-hour journey to discover they belong together.

The movie's characteristically light plot — Kathleen’s children’s book store's fight against Joe’s corporate chain — allows more time for what we really came to see: our leads romancing each other with poetic emails or antagonizing each other during chance run-ins. Take their chat in a coffee shop: the result of the anonymous pen pals agreeing to finally meet in person, the scene quickly devolves into a volley of witty retorts when Joe dec​ides to instead pretend he's bumped into Kathleen by coincidence, and after some irony (Kathleen tells Joe "The man who's coming here tonight is completely unlike you") and a line cribbed straight from The Shop Around The Corner about “poetry and meanness,” (the Jimmy Stewart classic inspired the story’s premise and even the scene, right down to the blocking), the sort of dialogue-based set-piece leaves Joe stung with disappointment that Kathleen is the woman he’s been writing, perfectly flipping the story on its head at the mid-point.

Still, he's in love with his pen-pal, so he's got no choice but to rehabilitate his real-life relationship with Kathleen by sweet-talking his way into her apartment with flowers. And when he finds himself covering her mouth to keep her from saying something she’ll regret — a moment described as “unexpectedly tender and sexy” in the script — Kathleen finally begins to suspect (know?) that Joe is the man she’s been writing. The rest of the third act runs on that subtext as their attraction blossoms until there's nothing left for Joe to do but confirm her unspoken suspicions by arranging another pen pal meeting in Riverside Park. Compared to Billy Crystal’s clever-but-hollow monologue at the end of When Harry Met Sally this climactic moment is simple and poignant — Ephron understands that there's too much between Joe and Kathleen to get at with words. Instead all Joe can muster is a shrug, and Meg Ryan’s reaction as Kathleen says more than any speech could.

Side note: The scene where Joe reveals himself also poses a logical issue — since Kathleen has already told Joe she’s about to meet her pen pal, when he reveals himself what’s to keep her from thinking that he’s just there to crash her moment with another man? The confusion would ruin everything and force Joe into some awkward clarification: “Yeah, um, I’m actually the guy.” Luckily Ephron has been navigating the issue from the opening minutes when Joe pens an email about his dog Brinkley. His dog’s name is the only personal information either of them exchange via email, so when Joe shouts “Brinkley! Brinkley!” as Kathleen sets eyes on him, it’s all she needs to hear to know it's OK to fall in love.