Joe Fox

Yeah.

whoa yeah i can't even picture that i don't think he would have been able to pull off what harry pulls off or what um billy crystal pulls off because it would just be a different movie it would be so different billy crystal really lets harry be unlikable in certain parts and i think that's that lends itself to a really great portrayal of a very flawed person who's a good person and who you do genuinely want to be friends with but god they need to get some things together And just going off of You've Got Mail, which I said last week, Joe Fox from You've Got Mail can get fucked.

So not Tom Hanks, but the character he plays could get fucked.

I got no

for each other you know yeah yeah um so this guy joe um they're kissing in the airport and harry walks by this is this is a time jump where this is a few years later yeah

and

harry walks by and does a double take and is like i know two of these people and so they're making out meg ryan sees that they're she's being watched and she's like oh hold on hold on we're being watched by a And he's like, Joe, I thought it was you.

He knows him.

Right, but the dynamic here is totally different.

Hanks is playing Joe Fox, who is the heir to this massive Fox Books superstore empire.

And Ryan plays Kathleen Kelly, who runs the shop around the corner, this tiny independent children's bookstore.

And the plot mechanics are super straightforward.

If this were a gritty indie drama, the anxiety would be completely overwhelming.

But because we know harmony will be restored, we can lean into it and laugh.

And having Hanks and Ryan makes it work because on paper, Joe Fox is just a corporate raider destroying a beloved local institution.

Right.

Uh, this is Tom Hanks.

All right, NY152.

NY152.

152.

He's 152 years old.

It is the story of Kathleen Kelly, played by Meg Ryan, who runs a tiny, beloved independent children's bookstore called The Shop Around the Corner.

And she is going to war against Joe Fox, played by Tom Hanks, who is the ruthless executive of a massive corporate behemoth book superstore moving in across the street.

Before we even touch the bizarre adaptation lineage of this film, we have to pause and connect the plot directly to Kathleen Keenan's own biography.

Oh my gosh, I know.