Never before has a remake missed its mark so much as to totally miss the entire purpose of the original. It's not that You've Got Mail is a bad film, far from it, it's actually quite good as romantic comedies go and by today's standards, very well written compared to its competition. But it seems to me that it kind of missed the whole point of the story. The story remains, in both the original and remake, about coincidences, and loving that which you thought you hated. However, if you look at You've Got Mail a little closer, you'll see that they never really hated each other at all. Their personalities, as well as just about anything else about them, EXCEPT for the fact that they were competitors. I don't know about you, but to me, that borders formulaic in the romantic comedy context. In The Shop Around the Corner, they worked together, all day, everyday, and they knew quite enough about each other to have real rage about one another and have a genuine hate towards each other.
What I hate the most about You've Got Mail is the way they took the story and tried to turn it into some sort of social commentary, big business versus small business, rich versus poor and all that. It's not that I hate the message, I just don't think it does anything to help in telling the story, in fact, it added to making it cliche. Another enjoyable feature in The Shop Around the Corner is the fact that it is set during Christmas, but it is only a Christmas movie if you want it to be, meaning that it can hold it's own anytime of the year, but still be watched around the holidays and give you that Christmas feel.
The original also has so much more going for it in terms of storytelling. They didn't just make it a romance, but they made it a story about the entire store. The movie is just as much about the owner, Mr. Matuschek (wonderfully portrayed by Frank Morgan, of The Wizard of Oz) as it is is about the love/hate relationship between James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Mr. Matuscheck's suspicions of his wife cheating on him with James Stewart also adds to the complexity, not only of the story, but the struggles of Frank Morgan's character. You actually care about everyone inside the store, not just the main characters, and you want to know how it turns out for everyone involved. I think one of the most heart-felt moment in the story is when a lonely Mr. Matsuchek, after just leaving his wife and is alone for Christmas asks everyone if they would like to have dinner with him, and the only one available is the new delivery boy whom he had just met. It is a very touching scene and a fitting closure in the movie for Frank Morgan's character.
There are few remakes that manage to break the original and while this one comes close, very close, it just misses, but only for the fact that it kills the point of the movie that they don't have a day-to-day relationship with each other and don't know who the other is. The question explored in the original was "how well do we know the people we see every day?", while the remake merely asks"how well do we know those on the internet?" It is a valid question, but I think the shock value is greater in the old one, just because they knew each other very well and had valid reasons to hate one another. In the remake it was their personal prejudices that prevented them from bonding outside their secret relationship and even then, until she knew he was her competitor, they still seemed like they would have hit it right off.
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