You've Got the Shop Around the Corner

It's remakes week on DWS: RomComs

It’s week one of our romantic comedy survey, where we watch and talk about romantic comedies. This week we’re looking at remakes with The Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail.

Any of you who have listened to enough of my podcasts has heard me talk about You've Got Mail; it’s my #1 defense of “love what you love.” This movie has a lot of problems, many of which I find hugely problematic from both a feminist and a story expert perspective, but it’s also charming and Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and New York. And gentrification takes down a white lady… kind of, although the movie is absolutely not interested at all in looking at it from that perspective. I’m just saying; it’s a soup with some stones in it, but a lot of it is really good.

But let’s start with the original, and in my opinion superior, story: The Shop Around the Corner.

TSAtC (1940) follows the relationship of two shop colleagues who do not like each other, but are falling in love with each other through anonymous mail, and neither of them knows… at least not at first.

There are a lot of things that I love about this story based on Ben Hecht’s original play. For one, it takes place in Budapest, which I really like. Aside from a few references to a song called Ochi Chernye and the Hungarian names (Stewart is Alfred Klarik; Sullivan is Klara Novak; they work for Hugo Matuschek, played by Frank Morgan) it’s a very American story with an American sensibility, but still… it’s nice to see something from this Hollywood era that at least tries to acknowledge that the world is a big place.

For me, the heart of any romance is the love story, and let’s note that the love story and the romance are different things. A good love story does not have to be romantic or sexual. Some of my favorite love stories are parent-child, best friends, colleagues… love stories happen everywhere, and they hands-down the number one thing I enjoy in fiction.

Romances can sometimes exist without a love story. Romeo and Juliet—all romance, no love story. They didn’t know each other. They barely spoke to each other. And then they killed themselves for each other. R&J is a story of the story we tell ourselves gone awry. It has nothing to do with love.

All that said, we’ve got a solid love story here in TSAtC. While Mr. Klarik and Ms. Novak—everyone is called by their last names in this, it’s kind of charming—don’t get along, they do respect each other. Their letters to each other, anonymously written and sent to post office boxes, are deeply intimate, and they get to know who the other really is without ever seeing them.

In the middle, Klarik discovers who his letter-writer is and that switches the story around; now he knows, what is he going to do? Well… he gets to know her better. He’s kinder to her at work. She softens toward him. And when the moment comes that it’s finally revealed to her who he is, they’re already in love.

It’s a pretty sweet story.

The great opportunity of a remake is that you have the opportunity to fix what went wrong in the original, but there isn’t that much to fix in TSAtC. There’s a power dynamic problem in that Mr. Klarik is Ms. Novak’s supervisor, but it’s very clear throughout the story that the real power is with Mr. Matuschek, who wields that power very precariously. Also, in the love story, they don’t know there’s a power differential between them, and as soon as he knows, he uses his power to be kinder to her while he’s still figuring everything out. I think that power dynamic gets a pass here; there are a lot of mitigating factors.

One thing I really enjoyed in TSAtC is the way they deal with mental health issues. There are two instances of people being sick with mental health issues and taking to their bed to heal, and everyone in the story is absolutely on board with that being a legitimate response. No one is mocked for taking the time and space they need to heal their mental health.

It’s just a great movie. I love it.

The problem with You’ve Got Mail (1998) is that it takes a great story and just ruins it.

First, Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) and Joe Fox (Hanks) don’t have an opportunity to get to know each other in real life very much. He’s a big business bookstore chain owner who moves into town and immediately threatens her amazing children’s bookstore around the corner from his Barnes and Noble-type box store. They’ve been writing to each other for a while, but when they meet in person, the relationship is immediately living under a huge power differential. He’s a multi-millionaire whose big business is set to go go Godzilla all over her store.

But it’s not just a store; it’s not just a business. Her bookstore—named The Shop Around the Corner—is who she is. It was her mother’s store. Kathleen has grown up in that store. She has read all of the books. She knows children’s literature like no one else. She hires people who are also passionate about children’s literature. They are her family now that her mother is dead, and this store is her livelihood, her legacy, and her identity.

And he is set to destroy it.

Meanwhile, in the background, they’re writing to each other in these letters that are just a little too cute for me. “I’d bring you a bouquet of sharpened pencils” is the kind of sentiment that traipses into manic pixie territory. It’s not the real vulnerability that you need to establish a deep relationship. They’re both just so cute—I saw a butterfly on the subway and it left to buy a hat—and I find it a bit grating.

So, the setup is bad enough, but then, just as in the original, he goes to their date and sees her there, waiting for him. Just as in the original, he goes in and talks to her as himself, and she thinks she’s still waiting for her love to show up. And just as in the original, they fight and he leaves and stops writing to her.

And that’s where YGM plummets off the side of the cliff. I’ll come back to this in a minute with something that might be able to… well, not fix this setup, it sucks, but maybe make it not so terrible. But for now, let’s just continue with what happens in the story as it is.

He’s destroyed her life. He has taken the store that she loved, that meant everything to her, and killed it. Instead of realizing he loves her and slinking back into the shadows to never darken her fucking door again… which is what a decent human being would do… he imposes himself into her life and basically harasses her into forming a friendship with him. He gets her to confide in him about this man she’s in love with, lying to her every single day about who he is and what his motives are, and then poisons her against this guy.

He gaslights her.

He gaslights her. I’m sorry, but you know what a relationship cannot recover from? Someone who feels so entitled to you that they will actively and maliciously warp your sense of reality to get you.

That’s not romantic. That’s sociopathic.

But he wants her, and if he wants something, he’s entitled to have it no matter what he’s done, right? He has no guilt, he has no shame. He doesn’t care about what he’s done to her or that neighborhood, and he’s going to go to another city next and do it all again. He wants what he wants, and he’s Joe Fox, so he should have it, right?

The text wants us to read this as charming. It is not charming.

Then, at the end, when she’s finally about to meet the Man of Her Dreams and Joe fucking Fox shows up, she smiles and cries and says, “I was hoping it was you,” and they kiss.

OMG it’s so terrible and infuriating and I cannot even.

Presuming we keep this terrible setup, because that’s the more fun challenge, here’s one way you can maybe fix it a little:

Picking up from the middle. She’s closed her shop. He can’t save her business; he’s already destroyed the thing in her life that meant the most to her. Not just work she loved, but her beloved DEAD mother’s legacy. The only decent thing he can do now, if he really loves her, is walk away and never darken her door again. At this point, keeping this setup, there’s only one way to save this story.

First, Joe needs to buy that property back and re-open that store. He needs to put Kathleen Kelly in charge of it, with no interference from him or Fox Books. She thinks she’s been victorious, and that someone who understands the value of her store and that neighborhood has saved it. She bumps into Joe and gloats that he lost. He says his goal was never to destroy things. She says whether it’s his goal or not, it’s what he does. He quietly agrees, wishes her the best with her new venture, and walks away.

And then… she figures it out. Something he says during their last interaction makes her realize that this man is the same man who has been writing to her. She does not know that he knows, too. While she’s struggling with that, Joe is working up a new business model that pumps support into the neighborhoods where there’s a new Fox Books going up.

He learns something. He’s changing to be a better person, not to get Kathleen. He’s given up on Kathleen; he knows he can’t undo what he’s done, and his motivation is not to get her. It’s to not be such a destructive force.

He writes to Kathleen and tells her in vague terms that he did something really bad, and he knows it. He knows he can’t apologize, he knows that all he can do is walk away and try to stop doing what he’s always done, but he’s not sure how he can do that without destroying his family legacy.

She is still angry at that—you didn’t mind destroying my family legacy—and doesn’t want to write back at first, but then… she does. She says that he’s going to have to figure it out but that, if he wants to write to her about how he’s feeling, he can.

He never does.

He makes the children’s book section of his story very tiny, and makes it standard policy to refer those customers back to her shop. He takes a percentage of the profits from Fox Books and pumps that money into investments in small neighborhood businesses. His father and grandfather are not happy, and they fight him. They agree that he can run this Fox Books, but he’s out of the larger business.

Okay, fine. He’s a bit depressed at this point, but he’s doing his best. He sells his things, he downsizes. Starts living a more modest life. I mean… not modest. He’s still a multi-millionaire, but it’s more modest than his previous existence. He has a budget. It’s him and Brinkley in a small apartment, and he finds that this life doesn’t suck.

Joe and Kathleen continue to write, and she what’s happening in the neighborhood. She doesn’t know that Joe bought her store, but she suspects. Business is good. She’s making money. She has money saved up. She wants to buy it back, and the price she’s given by the owner is less than what they paid for it in the first place. She is sure it’s Joe then, and says she wants to meet personally with the owner. The owner’s representative says that’s not possible. She buys the place back, at a profit. When she gets home, she has a letter from her Dear Friend, severing the relationship but wishing her well, telling her she’s an incredible person and has been a light in a life that’s had a lot of darkness. But for reasons he can’t tell her, he has to step away from the relationship.

Now, she’s curious about Joe Fox. She researches him, discovers some of the things he’s doing quietly in the neighborhood, trying to keep his help a secret. She writes to him and says that she doesn’t want them to stop writing, but she understands. If he changes his mind, she’s there.

Joe resists writing back; he knows he has no chance with this woman, he needs to stay out of her life and get over it. But he breaks down and they start writing again.

Kathleen shows up in a place where she knows he’ll be, and they have a nice interaction. She asks him to coffee, and he says no at first, but then changes his mind. They spend time together. They enjoy each other. In one of their interactions, Joe absently says something he said in one of his letters. He doesn’t realize he’s made a flub. She smiles quietly.

Finally, they decide to meet. They both show up, and neither one of them is surprised. He asks her how long she’s known. She asks him how long he’s known. Then he introduces himself: Hi. I’m Joe Fox. She holds out her hand. Kathleen Kelly. And he says, It is so nice to meet you, Kathleen Kelly.

And then you pull out on them looking at each other and smiling.

It’s about the best you can do with that movie as it was, but it’s fun trying to figure out how to fix it if you have to keep the entire setup.

All right! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And next week, we’re taking a look at the most classic construction for love triangles: The Cyrano, with Roxanne and The Half of It.

Have a great week!