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You've Got Mail Review: Back in the genre that served her so well with When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), New York-based writer/director Nora Ephron reunited Sleepless stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan for the romantic comedy You've Got Mail (1998). Updating Ernst Lubitsch's charming The Shop Around the Corner (1940) -- and, in turn, its remake, Robert Z. Leonard's In the Good Old Summertime (1949) -- for the email and super-store 1990s, Ephron created a glossy valentine to Manhattan's Upper West Side, with its neighborhood shops, cafes, and resident literati. Unfortunately, as critics noted, Lubitsch's incomparable wit and light touch mostly got lost in the translation as cute-as-a-button Ryan and laid-back Hanks spar over bookstores in public while they anonymously fall in love via America Online in private. Still, audiences were happy to watch Hanks and Ryan interact onscreen (unlike in most of Sleepless) amid a romantically idealized New York; Greg Kinnear and Parker Posey provided a dash of comic relief as Ryan's and Hanks' spurned mates. You've Got Mail became a Christmas-season hit, proving that Ephron's brand of old-fashioned romantic comedy could make box-office lightning strike twice. Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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