Love conquers all between two bad-for-each-other individuals in the predictably saccharine but tolerably entertaining romantic comedy "You've Got Mail" that reunites writer & director Nora Ephron with her "Sleepless in Seattle" co-stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as rival booksellers in the Big Apple who woo each other anonymously via the Internet when they aren't at war with each other in the real world. Sappy cinemaphiles who rhapsodized about "Sleepless in Seattle" inevitably will applaud Ephron's simple but charismatic recoupling of Ryan and Hanks. Discriminating audiences, on the other hand, may reject "Mail" for being manipulatively cute, slowly-paced, and thinly plotted fodder.

Ostensibly, Ephron's frivolous but disposable soaper updates director Ernest Lubitsch's "The Shop around the Corner." In that venerable but uneven 1940 comedy, James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan portrayed two clashing curio store clerks who exchange anonymous but endearing letters. Incidentally, not only did Miklos Laszlo's play "Parfumerie" serve as the basis for the Lubitsch comedy, but it also inspired director Robert Z. Leonard's 1949 musical "In the Good Old Summertime" that mated Judy Garland with Van Johnson.

Just for the record, "The Shop around the Corner" ranks as no great shakes itself. Maudlin and claustrophobic, with a subplot featuring infidelity and suicide, the Lubitsch comedy is still rather depressing for a film produced during the Golden Age of Hollywood. "Michael" director Nora Ephron and sister Delia Ephron have adapted Samson Raphaelson's "Shop" screenplay, preserving its better parts and contriving a few twists of their own. In their warm and fuzzy remake, the Ephrons have changed the setting from pre-World War II Budapest to contemporary New York City. Not surprisingly, because Nora Ephron lives on the Upper West Side, "You've Got Mail" makes Manhattan look like the better side of the rainbow. The sisters Ephron have expanded the scope of the action, too, so that the principals no longer toil under the same roof with the same tyrannical boss.

As Joe Fox, Tom Hanks of "Forrest Gump" plays the son of a wealthy family that owns Fox Books, a conglomerate book store a la Barnes & Noble which swallows smaller stores. Although Joe epitomizes capitalism at its most ruthless extreme, the filmmakers go to great lengths to take the sting out of his villainy. Not only do they show him taking his father's children by a second wife out to play, but they also saddle Joe with a shaggy Irish setter. Can anybody say "Turner and Hooch?" Conversely, as Kathleen Kelly, Ryan runs a quaint little children's bookstore named The Shop Around the Corner that her mother left her. Perky as always with her hair fashionably disheveled, Ryan appears hopelessly adorable in whatever she dons, whether pajamas or pants suit. Essentially, Hanks and Ryan are the whole show, and their cinematic chemistry has not dimmed an iota since their initial coupling in the abysmal 1990 epic "Joe Versus the Volcano." "You've Got Mail" marks the third time that they have teamed up.

The conflict is pretty basic. Opening its newest superstore a block away, Fox Books poses a dire threat to Kathleen's livelihood as a longtime neighborhood staple. Unlike "Sleepless in Seattle," where the Ryan and Hanks' characters eventually met at the end of the movie, "You've Got Mail" has their paths criss-crossing from the outset. The premise is that Kathleen and Joe meet in an-over-30 chat room at America-On-Line and have kindled a cozy e-mail relationship under the aliases of 'Shopgirl' and 'NY152.' Agreeing not to divulge any personal details, they have maintained a strictly platonic relationship. Nevertheless, they're so infatuated that they cannot wait for their live-in lovers to leave (they're singles) for work each day so that they can check their e-mail. Actually, Joe and Kathleen live only a few blocks apart, and Ephron shows early on how easily it is for these New Yorkers to walk the same streets without colliding. Joe is shacking up with a neurotic, caffeine-addicted book editor, Patricia Eden (indie movie queen Parker Posey), while Kathleen shares the same bed with a pretentious, bespectacled newspaper columnist, Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear of "As Good As It Gets." Eventually, Joe and Kathleen run afoul of each other at a publisher's party where she learns about Joe's notoriety. Dislike turns to hate when Fox Books lures Kathleen's customers away with its discounted books, cappuccino bar, and chairs to relax in and read. Faced with competition that will likely sink her small business, 'Shopgirl' seeks advice from 'NY152.' He suggests that she go to war. Rationalizing everything in terms of the movie "The Godfather," he refers to the mafia epic as "the sum of all wisdom" and charts his life by it. Meanwhile, she interprets life through the pages of Jane Austin's classic weepie "Pride and Prejudice." Despite the widespread protest that she generates in the media, Kathleen cannot compete with Fox, and she locks her doors after 42 years of business. Indeed, hostile takeovers of this kind raise few eyebrows in today's rabid business climate, but jarring realism of this sort seems distinctly out of place in an otherwise fluffy love story.

Although "You've Got Mail" is a tale perfectly suited for today's technology, several obvious consequences have been overlooked. Never mind that "Mail" depicts women as passive and inexorably overwhelmed, makes breaking up appear like a picnic, and condones Republican style capitalism where big company gobble up small stores without a moral hiccup. Presumably, the sisters Ephron figured that audiences will dismiss these uneasy questions without a thought as they purr over the on-screen chemistry between Ryan and Hanks. Formulaic, flighty, flirtatious, and feel-good-all-around, "You've Got Mail" emerges also as a shameless infomercial for AOL, Macintosh computers, and Starbucks Coffee. However, another rather unsettling question lurks in the background. What if that significant other who shares this cinematic experience with you is cavorting on-line with somebody else?