Last weekend, I had to chance to have a movie day with my nine year old daughter. We parked ourselves on the couch, for a serious do nothing day, and immediately found one of my favourite romcoms showing on TV: You've Got Mail. It's a weird thing, I own the movie but rarely pull it out to watch. Yet, every time it's on TV, I tune in. I love the Tom Hanks/ Meg Ryan conversations, in person and by e-mail. This time though, the movie showed me a side of Tom Hanks I hadn't really thought him capable of before: a near villain, of the bookish kind!
As a book lover with my finger on at least some of the book business (it's really amazing how much information an amateur can amass through Twitter, book blogging, and so on), watching this movie again from a newer perspective left me torn. How could Kathleen Kelly fall for the guy that made shooting noises, complete with finger guns, at the closing of another independent bookstore?!
In retrospect, knowing what I know now about the fragility of the book business, as technology is changing the way we read, I felt a little ill at the prospect of Tom Hanks' character, Joe Fox, being proud of his accomplishment. This was worse for me than had he taken on the role of a deranged serial killer, hunting down puppies! For shame, Joe Fox, for shame! And still, Kathleen Kelly ends up with him! Granted, she does wax poetic about the ever changing nature of New York City, etc. as some kind of justification for it all. But, still! Have some gumption and dump the guy for his crass, insensitive ways!
Well, maybe I'm being too harsh on Joe. There did seem to be a shift in Joe's attitude near the end, as he realized the dumbass he was being towards the woman he was falling in love with. But, it never did change the fact that at least two Indie book stores where demolished in the movie. Is this acceptable? Did Kathleen Kelly sell her soul to the book devil? Either way, this new revelation has tainted my love for the movie just a bit. Long live book stores (and Tom Hanks, despite his asinine fictional character)!
3 comments:
Geeze, I'm never going to look at that movie the same way again! Whenever I think of this movie, the I can't help but think of the 'bing' noise, oh the good old original email days ;)
I was totally cracking up at the dial-up noises too! I forgot about all that hassle, lol. I think I had a 14K modem; 1/2 hour connect time and all :-p
Ha! You know this movie was on about a month ago and I caught a little of it visiting with my dad. And I kind of had some strong feelings about his big bully business bulldozing over the little guys in this movie. And what is happening with the book stories around now too. And that she got hooked up with a man over the internet. Crazy! But yeah, hard to believe.
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