A classic

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it seemed to have a decent reputation, I thought I might as well check it out. I always knew that ‘You've Got Mail’ was a remake of this classic and it was rather funny that it took me almost 30 years to finally see the damned thing. Well, even though I did understand why it was considered as a vintage romantic-comedy classic, to be honest, it didn’t really blow me away though. First of all, even though it was intriguing that the action was taking place in Budapest, I didn’t really see the point since all the characters looked and sounded American. I understand that it was adapted from a Hungarian play but why not move the action to New York for example like in ‘You've Got Mail’, if you won’t actually use this European setting at all? Concerning the story, the best aspect was how they depicted the everyday life in this shop and the relationships between the various employees and also with their boss, Mr. Matuschek. That was actually very vivid and quite well done but, at the end of the day, it was never the focus of this movie. Indeed, the focus was the romantic relationship between Alfred Kralik and Klara Novak and, well, to be honest, this romance never really swept me away. Basically, it was based on the mistaken identity, a typical romantic-comedy gimmick which I always found rather tedious. In this case, I thought it was also a little bit weird that, when the movie started, their romantic correspondence was already going on for a while. In fact, you never really read or heard one of their letters but I guess it wasn’t the point. Even weirder was the fact that you actually never see their romance blossom. Indeed, I would have expected that, in spite this passionate romantic correspondence, the two colleagues would slowly grow closer to each other and, at some point, they would be torn apart between the feelings that they have for each other and the feelings they had for their mysterious correspondent without knowing that it was actually the very same person. Instead, they went for this other romantic gimmick which was ‘even though they hate each other, they are actually in love’ which must be the most toxic way to have a relationship (after 20 years with my ex-wife, I think I know what I’m talking about...). I also thought the ending was rather weird as, suddenly, they were in love when, 5 mins before that, there was actually barely any chemistry between them. Concerning the actors involved, I have to admit that James Stewart was so entertaining and pretty much pitch-perfect here though. Concerning Margaret Sullavan, she was not bad either and I have to admit that I was not familiar with her but it made sense since she preferred working on the stage and made only 16 films. Anyway, even if it didn’t really work for me, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

6/10