You’ve Got Mail is hardly a film with a message. It is by all measures a romantic comedy. But it does dabble in trying to say something, which is that the big guys (Fox Books) squashing the little guys (Shop Around the Corner) is not sporting at all. Trouble is, the filmmakers start the argument and then walk away, since it really doesn’t conveniently fit with the prescribed happy ending. And, in a way, this film parallels what big chain bookstores or any big discount store does. Because, as much as you can moan about how impersonal those chains are or how unknowledgeable the staff is, these places give the people what they want by giving them a bargain. Likewise, You’ve Got Mail is also a bargain. The Ephron-Hanks-Ryan collaboration proved successful with Sleepless in Seattle (and to think Gus Van Sant got grief for remaking Psycho; at least he didn’t remake his own movie as Ephron has here). The formula is set so that Hanks and Ryan could stand in a ditch and still draw them in. This is what the people want.

By the time that Fox Books has opened its doors, Joe and Kathleen have already met, though they don’t know it. They’ve been carrying on a friendly relationship via e-mail. No names or occupations are traded, just daily musings on the pleasures of living in New York and how good Scotch Tape smells. It’s a clandestine affair. Each of the parties sneak time at their computers, hiding the friendship from their significant others (Joe’s wired book-editor girlfriend, played by Parker Posey, and Kathleen’s luddite newspaper columnist, played by Greg Kinnear). At one point, Joe and Kathleen do meet face to face. They flirt, but Joe doesn’t let on that he’s the one threatening her livelihood. When that realization hits, war is declared and they begin to torment each other – all the while returning home and confiding to their e-mail friend the problems they’re having with the other and giving advice about what to do.

Finally, Joe discovers that Kathleen is his computer buddy and then his plan of attack changes. He works to endear himself to her, so that she can see beyond the fact that his business is shutting her business down and recognize that Joe is a truly good guy.

The theme the Ephron sisters stick into You’ve Got Mail is progress, and not so much progress in a good way (though it can be that, too) but that of the inevitable. Using the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner as a template, they throw in modern-day concerns. Those big, roomy bookstores mean more distance between people, and e-mail provides one of the more isolated forms of communication (one of Kathleen’s employees, played by Jean Stapleton, jokes, “I tried cybersex once, but I kept getting a busy signal”). The rallying cry that Joe suggests to Kathleen while they’re still strangers e-mailing, is “It’s not personal; it’s business.” This is a world in which people are defined by their coffee orders, where they’re more concerned about the cost than what something is worth. And, in one scene, Joe and his father and grandfather discuss the smaller bookstores’ customers. Joe slips out the word “readers,” to which his father replies, “Don’t romanticize them.”