I detest Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail? This isn't the "Well, that was two hours of my life that I'll never get back" kind of loathing, since you can leave a bad movie and get on with your life. No, it's something deeper than that; it's the loathing one has for a work of art that is dishonest to its core.

You've Got Mail is about a woman who runs a children's bookstore, which has been in her family for generations. She is losing customers to a big box chain store, which opens up around the corner from her store, to the point where she is uncertain about whether or not her store will be able to survive. She finds a champion over the Internet who advises her on how to deal with the problem. The twist? Her new friendly champion owns the chain that is slowly putting her out of business.

Hilarity ensues.

American conservatives rage and rant because this type of movie actually dares to address political issues. In this case, it's the destruction of small, family-owned businesses at the hands of international chains. It's a critique of the way laissez-faire capitalism has developed in the last 20 years. These are the sorts of films that make conservatives think there is a liberal bias in Hollywood.

What conservative critics fail to mention is that films, like You've Got Mail, are not committed to any serious political critique: they are genre pictures that quickly abandon any pretense of a critical point of view when it conflicts with the requirements of the genre.

In You've Got Mail, the woman's shop eventually closes. Despite this, the email correspondence goes on and, in the (anti) climactic scene, the heroine meets the hero in a Manhattan park. Does she say: "You bastard! You destroyed my family's business—I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!?" Of course not. This is a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy and, while he is a smarmy bastard who has destroyed her family's work, a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy has to end with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks being…well…romantic. So, when the identity of her email suitor is finally revealed, Meg says, "I was hoping it was you."

Now, this throws narrative plausibility out the window; I didn't buy it for a second that Ryan would fall in love with the man who put her out of business, even after the short scene where she wanders through the children's department of one of his stores and thinks that maybe it's not so bad. It makes no sense. But what catapults this film into the ninth level of hell for me is that the ending betrays the nominal social criticism of the film: well, gee, if Meg Ryan can forgive Tom Hanks in the film, maybe destroying family-run businesses isn't such a bad thing after all. The short scene where Ryan comes to terms with the big box store is primarily meant to pave the way for the happy ending, but it also completely undermines the film's political critique.

Ephron shouldn't be singled out. An even more egregious example is Norman Jewison's adaptation of Other People's Money. This film is about a hostile takeover artist (Danny Devito) who makes a play for a company run by the venerable Gregory Peck. It's no contest; by the end of the film, Devito has taken over the company and dismembered it, throwing most of its employees out of work in order to enrich some shareholders. He has also managed to woo Peck's daughter, who has fought him tooth and nail throughout most of the movie.

Jewison, who I consider a better filmmaker than Ephron, shades the woman's character such that her revulsion toward Devito's actions is tinged with a fascination for his character from fairly early in the film. Nonetheless, the ending rings decidedly false again because it makes no realistic sense for a woman to fall in love with a man who has destroyed her family's business. The ending only makes sense in terms of the expectations of a romantic comedy.

And once more, it completely undermines the political point of the film. Devito's character is given a choice in Other People's Money: win the company or win the woman. Until the last five minutes, it appears that he cannot have both. The fact that he appears set to take over the company is a potent comment on how people like him put profits over people. The ending, unfortunately, allows him to have his cake and eat it, too; the character gets to be a bastard without consequences. All of the fine speeches about traditional values seem like so much pointless preaching when placed against the amorality of the forward motion of the story.

Liberals? Hah! Everybody in Hollywood is a filmmaker, and politics, as always, takes a backseat sentiment.

Copyright © 2001 Ira Nayman. All Rights Reserved.

Ira Nayman <ira@ecommons.net> has a BFA from York University; his specialization was screenwriting. His writing on film has appeared in Creative Screenwriting, among other publications. Ask him about the films he likes some time.