This summer, my wife and I will mark our 20th wedding anniversary, and thoughts of all the planning and such that went into that big day are slowly fading into hazy but happy memories. A peculiar event not that long ago, however, brought back one certain aspect. And that's when a return to sender envelope arrived in the mail one day.
Inside it was one of our original wedding invitations, reportedly stuck in some mail sorting equipment for more than a decade. It was quite the surprise to us (and explained why the addressee never sent a gift -- just kidding), although you occasionally hear of letters being found and sometimes actually making their way to the intended recipients many years beyond ours was lost in the system.
Of course, one can understandably point out some cog in the postal service for such mishaps, but a certain English senior citizen can't blame the disappearance of hers on that. And that's because instead of mailing it, she stuck her letter -- seeking advice about her young love quandary -- into the Juliet Wall, a real-life place in Verona named after Shakespeare's tragic figure and where the lovelorn go to post romantic queries, requests and dreams.
Granted, Ms. Capulet wasn't likely to respond herself -- what with being dead for a number of centuries by her own hand -- but volunteer, Dear Abby type scribes do the work for her, collecting those letters and responding to them. When American tourist Sophie Hall (Amanda Seyfried) ends up doing such work, she discovers Claire's (Vanessa Redgrave) letter some 50 years after the fact.
On a whim, she decides to answer it, and thus the plot is set into motion for "Letters to Juliet," a somewhat pleasing but highly formulaic and ultra predictable romantic comedy. In it, the two women go on a romantic hunt for the older Englishwoman's long-lost beau, all while her grandson (Christopher Egan) thinks it's a silly waste of time and Sophie's fiancé (Gael Garcia Bernal) is off finding food suppliers, recipes and such for the restaurant he's opening back in New York.
Before you can say "love never dies" and/or "well isn't that convenient," the unlikely threesome set across the Italian countryside in search of the man who not only shares his name with many other men, but may very well have moved on or even passed away. Fear not, dear reader, since most romantic comedies have happy endings it's a safe bet that not only will the quest be successful but that the two quarrelling youngsters will also eventually fall prey to the old opposites attract chemistry.
As stated before, there's nary a surprise to be had, but rom-com fans seem to like their offerings that way. Accordingly, if you're not one of them, this could very well be an excruciating experience and/or long sit. However, if you are a diehard aficionado or can at least stomach the usual rote genre trappings, the offering by director Gary Winick -- who works from a script by Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan -- should go down easily enough.
And what makes that work in that regard is the veteran actress who upstages her younger costars. While Seyfried and Egan are stuck in clichés and the chemistry between them feels manufactured and calculated rather than organic, and Bernal is wasted in the distracted/busy boyfriend part, Redgrave effortlessly makes her character come alive. As a result, you end up truly hoping she finds her love from so long ago, even if we know next to nothing about him.
It's one of those cases where the performer manages to rise above the material and shine. An amusing running side note with that is the bevy of Lorenzos she meets on her quest, all of whom appear quite eager to play the part despite not being the right guy. Even so, that's eventually run into the ground alongside the usual genre conventions, meaning everything feels fairly worn and threadbare, even if the cast and scenery are certainly easy on the eyes.
Now if we could just get the rom-com formula in letter form, mail it, and have it get lost in the system for decades, the increasingly tedious genre might get a much needed shot of originality from writers willing to do something new or interesting with the material rather than take the cinematic lemming approach. Alas, "Letters to Juliet" follows the others over the cliff and rates as a 4 out of 10.
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