The tale of the tape: Julia Roberts has no business slumming in a movie like Runaway, while Mail pretty much represents Meg Ryan's pathetically limited range as an actress. And Richard Gere can't do comedy at all, yet that's not as grandiose an offense as Tom Hanks refusing to do the comedy we all know he can do in a film that could use plenty of livening up.
See, if Hanks were to deign to that, he'd be letting us see Hanks B.C., the wild and crazy guy who made us laugh until we cried in Bosom Buddies and Bachelor Party. He's afraid we'll forget serious Hanks A.D., the almighty thespian who co-produces straight-to-TV war fellatio with Saint Spielberg, talks to volleyballs and whores it up for Oscar in showy retard-with-AIDS roles. So while both Runaway Bride and You've Got Mail are howlers, neither is as pathologically sinister as Hanks, who's committed the cardinal sin of leaving comedy in the incapable hands of Jim Carrey, Jim Belushi, Kenan Thompson and Cedric the Entertainer, the four most unfunny funnymen in America not named Jerry Lewis.
Each week the author treks to the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library, where a staff member blindfolds him and escorts him to the movie shelves. After selecting a film at random, Seely checks it out and reviews it.
