You've got 90s Nostalgia and Dial-up Internet

Ah... You've got mail. I remember thinking last time I watched it about a hundred years ago that it was a film I really ought to have loved, but I didn't, not quite.

Well, I've got more emotional in my old age, and I welled up a couple of times, but again... unconvinced. I get that they fall in love online. After all, I was gutted when Mark from Columbus stopped messaging me back - I was developing a crush on him, his style of writing, the way he thought. And if you've been paying any attention at all, you will know that I profess to be in love with a man I have never met, although I know an awful lot about him through what I've seen and heard and read.

So it's not the falling in love part I object to. It's just the fact that (spoiler alert, by the way) one minute they're fighting and the next minute, ping, he's in love and taking her flowers. No explanation, really. I suppose in a book you could explain that better, the complexity of his thoughts. But unconvincing.

But anyway, it was fun to watch, mostly for the nostalgia. That internet dial up tone. The absence of Harry Potter books in the bookshops. And back then, no guilt, because I'd yet to place my first order with Amazon.

And, of course, New York. Places I tell myself I vaguely recognise, though on closer inspection it's just generic New York I recognise, but that's good enough for me. I love it there - but then you know that, too.

And Starbucks. When I watched this back in whenever it was I probably had never seen a Starbucks, let alone having a clue as to what it would become. (And how desperately I would one day come to miss it...) And I don't think I even fully understood whether they were emailing, instant messaging or what. In my defence, I never had AOL, so it was all a bit confusing: computers didn't talk outside of America back then.

I'll leave you with my favourite quotes, and recommend you watch it, if you too long for the happier, simpler era of the late 90s...

"I could never be with anyone who didn't take politics as seriously as I do." (and you were thinking there would be no mention of the West Wing!)

"People do really stupid things in foreign countries."

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."