Once past the nifty computer-generated opening of a virtual New York City, viewers will be introduced to the two main characters. Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, an endlessly perky and chipper owner of a small children’s book store. Hanks plays Joe Fox, the puffy-faced owner of a huge chain of successful bookstores (a la Barnes and Noble) that is opening its new outlet around the corner and intends to run Kelly’s shop out of business. They unknowingly met in a chat room (before the film starts) and have been communicating via e-mail for months…but neither knows who their pen-pal really is.

The rest of the story unfolds so predictably unimaginative that it actually rivals Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit in terms of a sheer lack of originality. Essentially a remake of The Shop Around the Corner, the 1946 Jimmy Stewart/Margaret Sullavan classic, Mail plods along at powerfully sluggish two-hour pace that is about 30 minutes too long for fare this shallow and slight. Nobody that has been to the movies in the past forty years should be entertained by this film or surprised by its outcome.

Hanks’ phoned-in performance is particularly vacant and reminiscent of Harrison Ford’s wooden turn in Sabrina, while Ryan is, as always, a pleasure to watch. His charm is turned down to around "3" and hers is cranked up to about "12". Mail will likely draw many comparisons to Seattle – a film about two love-hungry adults that fall for each other site unseen.

Why did the studio honchos think that the average American needed to see a flick so similar that they actually enlisted the same stars? The answer is simple – money. Hanks and Ryan are huge box office draws. Why? Because he’s the type of guy that men want to be, and she is the girl that most women secretly wish they were (but will never ever admit…ever).

Mail also boasts an amazing cast of co-stars – Greg Kinnear, Jean Stapleton, Dave Chappelle and Dabney Coleman capably handle their roles, but Steve Zahn and indie-goddess Parker Posey stand out in their smaller parts. How does a film pay for this many stars of this magnitude? The answer is simple – product placement. Prepare to have America Online, Starbucks, Apple and Microsoft products shoved in your face for a full two hours.

I have a few suggestions for better plots; the most obvious being a more realistic story of two people who meet on the Internet. He would be a 400-pound unemployed Star Trek fan pretending to be a successful businessman, while she would say that she resembles Cindy Crawford but would actually turn out to be a man. Oh, yeah, and he would be a serial killer, too. The tagline would be "Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates."

Other suggestions include You’ve Got Herpes – a madcap comedy (presumably starring either Pauly Shore or Charlie Sheen) about a guy who has a drunken one-time sexual encounter with a girl he meets on the Internet and wakes up with genital warts and a white, clumpy discharge. The rest of the film would be a hilarious romp as the Shore/Sheen character tried to track down the one-night stand, who would also turn out to be a serial killer. Tagline – "This Christmas, Pornography Isn’t The Only Thing Brad Flaherty Downloads."

Or You’ve Got Cancer – a bittersweet drama, directed by David Lynch, about a Willy Loman-type travelling salesman who neglects his family and dies of prostate cancer. Things take a surreal turn when, one year after his death, the soul of the salesman is transferred to the toilet brush in his family’s downstairs bathroom. The brush tries to be a better father to his two small children, but fails miserably as the children grow so frightened of him that they develop a psychological fear of the bathroom and must be hospitalized for severe constipation. Tragically, when the family returns home from the hospital, they find the brush hanging from a pipe on the bathroom ceiling. Then the two kids would grow up to be serial killers. Tagline – "Frank Schwartz Thought His Life Was Bad…Until He Died."

How about You’ve Got Conjoined Twin Myslexia – the big-screen debut of television’s South Park centers around the origins of the two-faced school nurse. The kids would get to use dirtier words, Cartman’s manhood would be revealed, Stan would be a serial killer and Kenny would die in every reel. Tagline – "Give Us Your Money; It’s South Park!"

Actually, You’ve Got anything (except Mail) would have been an improvement.

1:59 - for some very mild language and some adult situations.