Entertainment Weekly
"...[An] ultimately seductive romantic comedy..." -- Rating: B 01/22/1999 p.83USA Today
"...[The film] speaks volumes about the disturbing lack of intimacy in our megaeverything times..." -- 3 out of 4 stars 12/24/1998 p.4D New York Times
"...An inviting love story....[Hanks] continues to amaze. Once again, he fully inhabits a new role without any obvious actorly behavior....[He] also makes fine use of the film's comic opportunities..." 12/18/1998 p.E1 Box Office
"...Hanks and Ryan certainly have chemistry....Warm and funny..." 02/01/1999 p.62 Total Film
"...The New York locations are superbly used..." 10/01/1999 p.108 ReelViews 8 of 10
Tom Hanks can act...Meg Ryan can also act...However, in Nora Ephron's latest romantic comedy, You've Got Mail (an update of Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 movie, The Shop Around the Corner), all that's required of these two popular performers is that they effervesce. Any acting that goes on is incidental. Hanks and Ryan were hired for two reasons: both are instantly likable and, as proven in two previous outings (Joe Versus the Volcano and Sleepless in Seattle), they work well together. In their quest to assure that You've Got Mail is adored by movie-goers, the film makers have spared no expense...You've Got Mail has the virtue of delivering exactly what's expected from it. It's a feel-good movie that offers enough comedy and romance to warm the heart without risking a sentimental overdose. Fans of Sleepless in Seattle will almost certainly fall in love with the similar-yet-different nature of the production; only die-hard cynics will be turned off by all of the unabashed good will. If there are messages to be found here, they're that romance is still thriving in our technological era, and that well-written romantic comedies starring Hanks and Ryan don't represent much of a gamble for the financing studio. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The appeal of "You've Got Mail" is as old as love and as new as the Web. It stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as immensely lovable people whose purpose it is to display their lovability for two hours, while we desperately yearn for them to solve their problems, fall into each other's arms and get down to the old rumpy-pumpy...The movie was directed by Nora Ephron, who also paired Hanks and Ryan in "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), and has made an emotional, if not a literal, sequel. That earlier film was partly inspired by "An Affair to Remember," and this one is inspired by "The Shop Around the Corner," but both are really inspired by the appeal of Ryan and Hanks, who have more winning smiles than most people have expressions...The movie is sophisticated enough not to make the megastore into the villain. Say what you will, those giant stores are fun to spend time in, and there is a scene where Kathleen ventures anonymously into Joe's big store for the first time and looks around, at the magazine racks and the cafe and all the books--and then there's the heartbreaking moment when she overhears a question in the children's section, and she knows the answer but of course the clerk doesn't, and so she supplies the answer but it makes her cry, and Joe overhears everything. Whoa. - Roger Ebert
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