Leap Year 2 - ‘Letters to Juliet’ Review

Posted on May 31, 2010 - 7:05pm by michael It has long since become pointless to call attention to the predictability of your average romantic comedy, and it’s becoming even more pointless to call attention to the predictability of your average romantic comedy starring Amanda Seyfried, who is fast becoming Hollywood’s go-to girl for sappy romance. The movie's packed with clichés, it commits every traditional screenplay cheat to jerk us around emotionally on the way to the ever-obvious conclusion, and forces a smile onto material that doesn’t really earn our emotional investment. But it should be noted that Letters to Juliet does, in fact contain a moving love story, but unfortunately it’s surrounded by so much other garbage that every time it shows up it seems to be gasping for air. Following up her last intensely sappy tearjerker, Dear John, which was also centered around letter writing, Seyfriend takes on the role of Sophie, a fact-checker for The New Yorker, who travels to Italy with her fiancé Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal, whose talents are entirely wasted here in an utterly thankless role), a master chef. Victor immediately shows more concern for the flavors of Italy, leaving Sophie on her own while he takes off to check out the excitements of truffles and whatnot. Seeking her own adventure, Sophie goes to check out the house of Juliet Verona, where love-stricken locals post letters, seeking advice in the annals of love. A group of local women have been answering the letters in writing for years, an idea which captivates Sophie. When she decides to participate, she finds tucked within a missing brick in the wall a letter that’s half a century old, and thus begins the good one of the movie’s two love stories. The letter was written by a woman named Claire (Vanessa Redgrave, who has more class and style than everyone and everything else in the movie combined), who responds immediately, traveling to Verona with her grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan), and the three set off to find Claire’s lost love, Lorenzo (Franco Nero), with Sophie planning to make it her career-boosting New Yorker article. The search for Claire’s lost love among the beautiful Italian countryside and it’s lengthy list of potential Lorenzo’s is the emotionally enthralling tale that utilizes for delivery the remainder of the movie, like a succulent filet mignon served up in a styrofoam McDonald’s container with a side of stale fries. It’s not hard to see why this happens, of course. Redgrave supplies her character with a healthy dose of class, humanity, and a lifetime of experience, and her journey is a doubtful one except for the fact that it’s appearing in an American romance movie. Sophie, on the other hand, is engaged to a handsome Spanish man, one who clearly loves her, but who misses no opportunity to brush her off carelessly, even when she clearly needs him the most. [caption id="attachment_85062" align="alignleft" width="335" caption=""Come on, honey, lots of people spend most of their honeymoons apart. What? What?""][/caption] His callousness toward her is so unnecessarily overblown by the weak screenplay that I kept thinking of Glen, Drew Barrymore’s jerkoff fiancé in The Wedding Singer. But the movie’s biggest problem is the music. I can’t remember ever seeing a movie that so ruthlessly deployed such a consistent succession of romantic songs apparently designed to further reveal the ending of the story. Of course it isn’t enough that whenever Sophie is with Victor she hangs her head and casts hapless, half-lidded gazes in the general vicinity of the ground at her feet, and while she’s with Charlie she lights up like a Christmas tree. No, that’s not nearly enough. There also needs to be a sufficient musical cues to help along anyone not picking up on the visual ones. The movie’s soundtrack listing  boasts, among others, the considerable talents of Taylor Swift, but hack director Gary Winick, also to blame for last year’s idiotic Bride Wars, somehow manages to make everything sound like Avril Lavigne. The movie is, in fact, so wildly over-scored that – and I say this without the slightest hint of sarcasm – you literally could listen to it like a radio play and not miss a thing about the story, except for the stunning views of the Italian countryside, which the movie callously uses like this year’s moronic Leap Year did with the Scottish countryside. This is not a good accomplishment to be made by a movie already struggling under a crippling load of sappy crappiness, and which already feels like a remake of Leap Year. But like I said, it’s not devoid of merit, and I should point out that I certainly didn’t hate it. There are times when the movie is genuinely interesting and entertaining, but unfortunately there is also a disappointing multitude of scenes that made me want to throw myself in front of a bullet train. Consider one scene during the search for Claire’s lost love. Sophie and Charlie and laying out under the stars one night, when Sophie begins reciting a poem about the stars and love, which Charlie finishes for her before blurting that he feels like a schoolboy on Sunday. This is, mind you, long before they are allowed to have any feelings for each other, but that doesn’t matter. It’s so shallow and tepid that it reminds you that the whole story about these two hangs from Claire and Lorenzo’s story like a wet blanket. Note: While I was writing that last paragraph about Sophie and Charlie sitting under the stars spouting poetry at each other, by pure chance “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight” by Cutting Crew came on the radio and I got a better laugh than at any point during the movie. 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