I'm no grammarian, but AOL's syntactical redundancy of a catchphrase "You've got mail" has always made the hairs on the back of my neck perk up. You've Got Mail the movie is somewhat redundant, too: it bears more than a passing resemblance to the 1993 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan-Nora Ephron outing Sleepless in Seattle. It's also a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, which I'm embarrassed to admit I've never seen.

Hanks plays Joe Fox, part-owner in Fox & Sons, a Barnes & Noble-esque corporation. His plans are to lay waste to the independent booksellers in New York City's West Side by opening up a gigantic store replete with a coffee bar and comfy couches. The trouble is, Joe's "competition" includes "The Shop Around the Corner," a children's book barn owned by his anonymous online companion Kathleen (Ryan). The two despise each other in real life, but, cloaked by e-handles, they exchange jokes, anecdotes, and advice via AOL's Instant Messenger. They fall in love like this, of course, and the contradiction is enjoyable. (In one instance, Joe--"NY152"--naively encourages Kathleen--"Shopgirl"--to start protests against his own company.)

Both Hanks and Ryan are wonderful, but reports of their amazing chemistry are wildly exaggerated. They perform in a vacuum in You've Got Mail, if brilliantly so. This is their third movie together, and more than one critic has labelled them "the nineties' answer to Hepburn & Tracy." I tend to think of Ryan as better matched with Billy Crystal; has When Harry Met Sally already ossified? Perhaps I feel this way because sex entered the picture in ...Sally, while the Hanks-Ryan pair-ups are always about antiseptic, fairy tale romance.

Another quibble: You've Got Mail's minor characters take a backseat to the stars. Kathleen's coworkers arguably exist only to ask her how she's doing--she never returns the sentiment. Of marginally greater significance is Frank (Greg Kinnear), the Luddite with whom Kathleen has an unaffectionate relationship right out of Screwball Comedy 101--he's the Ralph Bellamy character, there to be shed. Mayhaps due to Kinnear's quicksilver timing (his ad-libbed talk show appearance is a hoot), Frank comes off as less of a plot device than Joe's girlfriend (Parker Posey)--Joe's personality would likely never attract such a harridan, or, at least, tolerate one.

Hanks glides from one contrivance to the next with the grace of a veteran scene-stealer. He smoothes over the film's rough patches, and fashions comic gold out of lines like, "Don't you love New York in the fall? It always makes me want to buy school supplies." Ephron, who was a sophomore director the first time they worked together, knows exactly his strengths. Her command of cinema, from the visuals (Pleasantville's John Lindley was the film's director of photography) to the music track (which employs such diverse acts as The Cranberries and Harry Nilsson to good effect), has improved since Sleepless in Seattle. (It helps that You've Got Mail is essentially a rehash.) I can't say she sold me on the pat, strangely conservative ending, however, in which she sells another woman up the river in sentimental haste.

Warner's You've Got Mail DVD is, pardon the pun, stacked. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is awfully good, with natural colours and definitive contrast. I did notice the odd white speckle that perhaps speaks to unwanted nicks on the negative, but this is an observation, not a complaint. On the audio end, the Dolby Digital 5.1 track is inexpressive except during musical interludes (and even then, not all of the musical interludes). Who cares? This is a dialogue-driven film, and Hanks, Ryan, et al have never sounded better.

After listening to the disc's screen-specific commentary (a third track houses isolated music in 2.0) by Ephron and producer Lauren Shuler Donner (Richard's wife), I concluded that Donner's presence was extraneous. She mostly reiterates whatever Ephron just said, and said better. Their discussion is full of interesting factoids, mind you--the fact that the brown leaves during You've Got Mail's autumnal sequences are the product of digital trickery, for instance. (The film was shot during the summer.)

Also on the DVD: a 14-minute (counting head and tail credits, plus extended clips) HBO interview with Ephron that is slick and insubstantial; two trailers (Ryan's reaction in these previews to Joe's invitation to meet is much funnier than the one that wound up in the final cut); Reel Recommendation trailers for Arthur, Joe Versus The Volcano, and ten others; a tour, narrated by Ephron and Donner, through Manhattan's West Side; an appetizing The Shop Around the Corner trailer; yet another trailer (I'm so sick of typing that word!) for the Judy Garland starrer In the Good Old Summertime; and last, but not least, production notes galore.

Whoops--I almost forgot. You've Got Mail is a digital age-oriented movie, thus Warners opted to include a wealth of DVD-ROM material in this package. I'm unable to view it, but I can tell you that PC users (Mac-kies are out of luck, which is ironic considering Kathleen's everpresent Powerbook in the picture) can access call sheets, a comparison between Shop... and ...Summertime..., music cues, interviews, Joe and Kathleen's e-mails (which I'd love to read), a screen saver, and more. Though I'm not sure what that "more" is.-Bill Chambers