LYT Review: LETTERS TO JULIET

From the people who wish they’d brought you THE NOTEBOOK.

I suppose you can’t blame a filmmaker for trying to rip off the ever-successful Nicholas Sparks. At least director Gary Winick (TADPOLE, and a bunch of crappy movies since) figured out that part of the formula involves words written on paper (see also MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, DEAR JOHN), though much like those who have adapted Sparks, he has found no way to make the act of reading especially cinematic.

But what I want to know is this: is it possible for me to like a romantic chick-flick, ever? I’d like to think so. When an entire genre or subgenre fails to appeal, I tend to think I must be stereotyping, and that there are exceptions somewhere. Certainly, I don’t hate every movie aimed primarily at women, as I enjoyed the SEX AND THE CITY movie, though in fairness, that property is a sentimental favorite because it strongly contributed to me getting laid once. Nope, can’t tell you the whole story...I swore secrecy.

I get THE NOTEBOOK. Can’t say I fully enjoy it, but I get why it works. And I do enjoy me some Garner and Rowlands in most anything these days. I don’t get TWILIGHT. I don’t get most of the movies Kate Hudson chooses to make. Ashley Judd’s output over the last decade was mostly horrific to me. So maybe I am hopelessly unromantic, but I’d like to think that somewhere out there, somebody can make a love story that appeals to crying women without insulting my intelligence and standards. Until then, I get to sit through tedious exercises like LETTERS TO JULIET.

Amanda Seyfried, who can look absolutely beautiful when filmed and lit correctly, and just kinda weird when not (Winick and DP Marco Pontecorvo give us both, which is disconcerting), plays a fact-checker for the New Yorker (wait...print media still hires fact-checkers?) named Sophie, whose REAL dream is to be a print journalist, which makes her arguably dumber than her character from MEAN GIRLS. But it’s all good, because her sexy Latin husband Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal) is not just good-looking, but also a good businessman and a great chef who owns his own Italian restaurant. They’re about to be married, but with Victor’s new place about to open, they decide to take a pre-honeymoon to Italy, where Victor, being connected via his work, will take her with him to visit vineyards, dairies, and places where all the finest food in the world is made.

 

Too bad for Victor that he is engaged to THE ONLY AMERICAN GIRL IN THE WORLD who DOESN’T want to do ANY of that. Seriously. Yes, I get that it’s a control issue – he’s doing work-related stuff while they’re on vacation. But if my girl wanted to take us on a vacation to, let us say the South, with the insistence that, for business reasons, she just HAD to tour the Jack Daniel’s distillery, a Mello Yello canning plant, and a catfish farm, you think I’d be bitching? Hell no.

Sophie, however, would rather write letters, presumably because doing so is a novelty nobody her age has ever had to do (kids a teensy bit older remember the post-Christmas bane that was writing thank-you letters to EVERY gift-giver, a task you could only get out of if you were lucky enough to be able to thank said giver by phone). But once in fair Verona city, she discovers a wall in which lovelorn folks stick their hand-written pleas for love advice to Juliet, yes, THE Juliet of Shakespeare fame (and yes, Sophie stands on balconies a lot just to rub this in). Of course, if Juliet knew a damn thing about what was good for her in the ways of love, she probably wouldn’t have killed herself over it in the early teenage years, so she’s no exemplar in this area.

Sophie is a bit smarter than that, though not by a whole lot, as later events will bear out. When she finds out that a group of old Italian women like to gather up the letters and compose hand-written responses, she decides to spend her days joining in, while her husband goes off and does all that tedious tasting of delicious food by himself. Then she knocks a piece of stone aside and finds a really old letter, one that’s like fifty years old or something (no, I didn’t take notes on the exact year amount...but it doesn’t matter), by an English woman who regrets not pursuing the Italian guy she fell for as a girl. And Sophie answers it, with platitudes about things never being too late. It must be noted that characters repeatedly say out loud what a great writer Sophie is, even though there isn’t much empirical evidence of this. And since the entire story is (MINOR SPOILER) written up by Sophie to great acclaim by movie’s end, it’s like the filmmakers are trying to tell you what a great story they’re giving you. Fellas, I believe the guy you’re imagining paying homage to had something to say on the topic; something about “protesteth too much,” I think it was.

A couple days later, the old English woman who wrote the letter shows up, and it’s Vanessa Redgrave, much to the benefit of movie viewers everywhere. Here, she’s called Claire, and has in tow an asshole blond grandson named Charlie (Christopher Egan), who’s pissed off at Sophie for giving Claire any kind of hope, so he comes in and starts yelling insults at her. This, of course, means they’ll be together by the end of the movie, which, I have to say, feels a bit racially dubious in this particular story. I mean, Victor’s awesome, nice, and cooks Italian, while Charlie is a total jerk, but he’s English (with an accent so impeccable I figured it must be fake...and it is; Egan’s Australian), Aryan, and does some charity work. I mean...seriously? Hugh Dancy was originally supposed to play the Victor role, and that would have balanced things. As is, it’s hard not to feel that the movie’s advocating for pretty blond white people to only date their own kind.

 

Yes, Redgrave’s looking for an Italian dude, but believe me, most of the audience won’t break those two down by any demographic other than “old.” Harsh, but true.

Oh, and there’s plot – the old Italian dude is named Lorenzo something-or-other, a name that a bazillion Italian guys have. But Sophie, being a fact-checker, has mad skillz at narrowing things down, and so it’s road trip time! And Claire is such a good human being that she makes the two youngsters fall for each other. It’s like GIGLI with Vanesssa Redgrave instead of a retarded kid who raps.

Will Claire find her man? Well, y’know, the stupid trailer already gave that away. Technically, it’s not “revealing the ending,” since this movie has almost as many endings as RETURN OF THE KING, but it does ruin the only element of mystery to be had. Not that people actually go to these things for mystery – I assume – but then I’m not sure why anyone would go to see LETTERS TO JULIET to begin with.

Luke Y. Thompson is an actor, writer, and film critic living in Hollywood.