This frail but winsome romantic comedy reunited Tom Hanks with both his Sleepless in Seattle co-star, Meg Ryan, and director, Nora Ephron. Billed as the screen's first internet love story, it is a reworking of Ernst Lubitsch's classic The Shop around the Corner, in which the stars play rivals in the bookshop business who unknowingly fall for each other in an online chat-room. But it's rarely as amusing as it should be and, for the most part, is frustratingly unromantic, with the leads coming together more like merged files than infatuated lovers. What's more, Ephron's combination of battle-of-the-sexes comedy and the struggle between community and capitalism (that tries to echo the style of Frank Capra) lacks social resonance. However, the latter-day screwball tale is certainly slickly staged and played with consummate ease, and Ryan and her bookshop staff exude a pleasant feeling of cosiness.

Book superstore magnate, Joe Fox and independent book shop owner, Kathleen Kelly fall in love in the anonymity of the Internet—both blissfully unaware that he's trying to put her out of business.