Why You’ve Got Mail is the Greatest Film Of All Time

I love You’ve Got Mail.

Here’s some other things I love:

Nora Ephron.

Delia Ephron.

Tom Hanks.

Meg Ryan.

Parker Posey.

Greg Kinnear.

The Upper West Side.

Cafe Lalo.

New York in general.

Steve Zahn.

The Ephron interiors aesthetic.

The Ephron exteriors aesthetic.

Heather Burns.

Jean Stapleton.

New York in the fall.

Newly Sharpened Pencils.

Emails.

Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron again and five times over.

I’m not actually going to convince you that You’ve Got Mail is the greatest movie ever. I’m in a WhatsApp group with three other filmmakers who bang on about Christopher Nolan all day and I’m not going to suddenly make them believe that ‘Oppenheimer’ was only okay but ‘You’ve Got Mail’ is masterful.

But in my heart that's how I see it.

I was thirteen when it came out. It was back when the 90s were our culture, before it was the past. Remember that? We were IN IT. We were watching ‘Friends’ and ‘Frasier’ and ‘The Truman Show’ not because they were lauded but because they were the current thing.

Back then we all had taste. Maybe you liked Pearl Jam, maybe you liked Alanis Morissette or maybe you liked Korn. It all mattered somehow. What you liked was badge you would wear and it meant something bigger than the sum of its parts.

Or maybe it didn’t but I was fourteen and when you’re fourteen you feel like one day you’ll get stopped in the street and given a standing ovation for the things you like and you’ll be given some kind of award by the Prime Minister. “Best Award for being a Counting Crows Fan”. Something like that.

‘You’ve Got Mail’ hit me right in the pleasure centres of my brain. I was already tracking every single step that Tom Hanks was making with his career. He was my guy. He was everyone’s guy but given I was young and the world revolved around me I was convinced I was his biggest fan.

And I loved Meg Ryan.

But most of all I loved the Ephron sisters. Their writing. How relatable it was.

I always loved New York, even though I’d never been there. I loved the New York of the Godfather and of Frankie and Johnny and of Taxi Driver. But somehow, I needed the romantic ‘You’ve Got Mail’ version of NYC too.

Isn’t it funny how some films just resonate?

I know every line of dialogue. Every shot and sequence. If I’m feeling I need to see my best friend I can either meet my actual best friend for a coffee or I can watch ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and literally any moment, with any character will make me think YES, THESE ARE MY PEOPLE. THIS IS ME.

Why did You’ve Got Mail resonate so strongly?

As I said, I don’t actually believe it’s the greatest film ever. Not even close.

But for me, personally, it means something.

It’s more than that, though. This isn’t just an article about how ‘we have our favourites’.

YGM was doing more. It had a worldview. It framed what Nora and Delia Ephron felt was important about life. The characters were passionate about books, about their coffee orders, about matters of the heart. And it wasn’t cynical and it wasn’t Hallmark sappy.

This film is my happy place. In the WhatsApp group I mentioned - there’s some demented broken wannabe more masculine part of me that wishes I felt this way about ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Raging Bull’, but I prefer ‘You’ve Got Mail’.

What movie do you love the way I love ‘You’ve Got Mail’? (Let me know in the comments!)