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 In cinemas Thursday [PG]
Director: Gary Winick
Runtime: 101mins.
Sometimes we make bad decisions in life and just have to live with them. For me, signing up to review this movie was one such decision. Released just in time for an unsuspecting Mother’s Day audience, Letters To Juliet presents itself as a romantic comedy, but in reality is more of a Disney-style adventure movie drowning in its own clichés; a film where the princess always gets the prince, all under the umbrella of some nauseating lesson about fate or destiny or one of those other words that I thought The Hallmark Channel had a patent on.
For anyone still interested, the story is as follows: Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) and her self-centred fiancé Victor (played in wonderfully-repulsive form by Gael Garcia Bernal) set off for a pre-Honeymoon holiday to the Italian city of Verona, home of the original Romeo and Juliet. While Victor is busy ignoring Sophie in a quest for suppliers for his new restaurant, she soon meets the Secretaries of Juliet – a group of women who (somehow) respond to the letters of lovelorn tourists delivering their woes to the mansion of Juliet Capulet. After deciding to join the group (one where, conveniently, everyone speaks English), it doesn’t take long for Sophie to upturn a rock where she finds an undiscovered 50-year-old-letter written by an English woman, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), who had long ago left her ‘true love’ Lorenzo to return to life in England.
Naturally, a venture across the Tuscan countryside in search of the long lost Lorenzo ensues. While the settings are beautiful and the rural Italian men and women they meet add some humour and charm, neither can save the film from complete inanity and implausibility, especially when a romance between Sophie and Claire’s toffy English grandson is brought into the mix. Granted, there are some mildly touching moments, but ultimately this is just another poorly conceived American movie whoring the Tuscan countryside for its weak and cliched love story.
The actors do what they can with the poor material – Redgrave adds some humanity, and Seyfried is suitably blonde and glowing in rustic light – but really, they needn’t have bothered. If two-and-a-quarter stars was a legitimate rating, I might give it to these two for simply trying – but sorry Juliet, this time I’m rounding down.
**
TESS CURRAN
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