Meg Ryan is kind of the undisputed queen of the romcom. This isn’t new information to anyone, but I thought it was important to define our terms when talking about this wonderfully frustrating film, You’ve Got Mail, directed by Nora Ephron. In it, Meg stars as Kathleen Kelly, the owner of a delightful children’s bookstore on the Upper West Side, The Shop Around the Corner. Is it very 1998 that a children’s bookstore still exists and thrives in New York? Absolutely. Does it ache with a kind of adorable nostalgia to hear the dial-up tones of the Internet as Kathleen logs onto AOL to chat with her mystery man, soon to be revealed as her business rival, Joe Fox (Tom Hanks)? You bet.

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But, even with its charm and Meg Ryan’s incomparable sweater sets, looking at You’ve Got Mail with a critical eye toward how this romcom deals with Kathleen’s job isn’t as rosy as imagining Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan strolling hand in hand through the city streets. Through its lovable actors and quirky premise (she’s writing full on whimsy in these emails to an unknown person, people!) the film almost wants us to forget that Kathleen’s entire livelihood and her mother’s legacy is destroyed by the guy to whom she proclaims: “I wanted it to be you!” I’m maybe thinking I kind of didn’t?

 

Full confession: I had only seen the first 30 minutes of You’ve Got Mail before this viewing, and had lied to everyone I know and love that I’d seen it in full just so people would stop telling me I had to watch it. This was a mistake on my part, dear reader. You’ve Got Mail is about as quintessential as a romcom can be, and even though I shed a real life actual tear at the final shot of the now-empty Shop Around the Corner, I loved it. Even though I loved this movie, there is a part of me that can’t get on board with the death of an indie bookstore, even if it’s in service of romance with an adorably charming Tom Hanks. I grew up in perhaps the loveliest indie bookstore out there (shoutout Blue Willow), so there was a part of me that wished for more with the resolution for Kathleen and indie bookstores everywhere.

 

When Fox Books moves in around the corner from the Shop Around the Corner, it sets in motion a series of events that leads to Kathleen’s workplace collapsing and also the resolution of the romance after the reveal that the two rivals have been anonymously corresponding and falling in love. As the two get closer in their virtual correspondence, Kathleen and Joe continuously argue in their working lives, and Kathleen turns to her pen pal for help with assertiveness in her workplace. Joe’s advice? After some extended metaphor from The Godfather, he essentially tells her to buck up: it’s not personal, it’s just business. Yet, for Kathleen, exactly the opposite is true — work is personal. Everything is personal. Kathleen cares deeply about her job, and Joe cares deeply about ???. He doesn’t seem to like books the way those at The Shop Around the Corner do. He cares about making money, but only half-heartedly.

 

That’s why it was so frustrating to watch Fox Books succeed at the expense of Kathleen’s store. Although the film wants us to feel for Kathleen, and root for the Shop Around the Corner to stay open and fight the capitalist domination, her job (seemingly) hinders any potential connection with Joe, as he comes off mainly as her jerky business rival. If not for their emails, would these two have fallen in love? The fact that the film has to use this quaint but contrived formula to get these two together and see each other for their true selves feels a little hollow. Or maybe it’s just me? I’m willing to admit I’m more attached to the idea of an independent bookstore staying open than I am to most things, so maybe I’m not seeing how her workplace actually gives them a point of connection, rather than serves as a wedge to potentially drive them apart.

 

It’s clear Kathleen loves her business, and more than just because she seems to be good at it. She doesn’t see her bookstore as a stepping stone to bigger things or deride it for any reason at all. We learn that the Shop Around the Corner was opened by her mom, and passed from mother to daughter. Kathleen even tells Joe (the irl version of him) she intends to pass it down to her future daughter. With all this emotional and personal investment in her business, the film has a lot of maneuvering to do in order to redeem Joe and his enterprise after the Shop Around the Corner, despite a heroic PR effort, closes. And maneuver it does.

 

Losing her business and the life she lead with it is treated like the intense personal tragedy that it is by the film, and then it is almost quickly moved on from in order to resolve the romance between Kathleen and Joe. Apparently, Kathleen is writing a now children’s book, something we never saw her express interest in before the shop closed, signaling to the audience that she is moving on from her previous career. The film knows that letting Kathleen truly grieve the loss of a job that was more than just a paycheck would be counterproductive to the closeness that is building between Kathleen and Joe, especially after he learns her true identity as his online paramour.

 

Yet, as I see it, there is no good resolution to this story (at least in romcom land) that lets Kathleen keep her business. Shoutout to the RomComoisseurs podcast for pointing this out as well. Although it would be in line with a cheesy romcom third act, Joe is not going to fall in love with her and then heroically close his thriving Fox Books location as a grand gesture — the film treats its characters as more believable than that. While well intentioned, the press for the Shop Around the Corner was never going to save it — Fox Books is too much of a behemoth to be defeated by a few fluff pieces on the local news. There was also a moment where a weepy Kathleen gives an excellent recommendation to a confused customer in the children’s section of Fox Books that Ballet Shoes is the best book in the series, and while I agree, I was worried for a moment that this film was heading in the direction of giving Kathleen a job like her old one, except for Fox Books.

 

Thankfully, the trope of “female heroine in love with her boss” did not come to be, and Kathleen is really truly out of a job and ready for love. In order for Kathleen and Joe to become an iconic ’90s romcom couple, the Shop Around the Corner had to close. It was all over as soon as the Fox Books sign went up. As an audience, we have to trust that Kathleen and Joe’s future as a happy couple will in no way be hindered by their past as ardent business rivals, and every sappy romantic bone in my body wants to believe in their love. Such is the power of an impeccable sweater set and Tom Hanks’s boyish charm. Even though, may I say, his character is kind of a dick. What kind of bookstore chain mogul hasn’t even read Pride and Prejudice? Did he even go to high school?

 

All in all, I loved You’ve Got Mail. It was designed for me, a book nerd with a love of pretty people falling in love. And yet, especially as year after year people continue to predict the death of independent bookstores, I found no joy in how this film tries to simultaneously celebrate Kathleen as a booklover and a small business owner and toss her job aside when the romance needed to kick into high gear. Her career, it seems, is collateral damage. Like I said before, there is no emotionally satisfying way for the film to prioritize career success for both Kathleen and Joe when they find themselves in this particular situation. Ultimately, the film chooses Joe’s job over Kathleen’s, and while that may make Meg Ryan swoon, I’m left feeling complicated about the whole thing.

 

I’ll probably still watch it again.