A girl with relationship woes can hardly set foot in Europe these days without finding herself hip-deep in yummy food and tasty men. The latest iteration of the story is “Letters to Juliet” or, as I like to think of it, “Eat Pray Hurl.”
Shakespeare likely never even saw (much less required as inspiration) the tourist-trap “Juliet balcony” in Verona, where sighing women today deposit letters to Romeo’s girl, little suspecting that behind the scenes a team of self-appointed Italian yentas is hand-writing answers to every one. (Wouldn’t that be unnerving — like leaving a note at the Wailing Wall and getting a postcard from God?)
Wandering into this scene with her fiancé is Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), a New Yorker fact-checker who, during a tense vacation with her betrothed (Gael Garcia Bernal), joins the letter-writing coven. She answers a 50-year-old note hidden in a nook by a now 65-year-old English grandma named Claire (Vanessa Redgrave, soft of voice and gentle of countenance).
VIDEO: ‘LETTERS TO JULIET’ REVIEW
PHOTOS: AMANDA SEYFRIED’S STYLE
Claire tells Juliet in the decades-old letter that she regrets leaving her Italian boyfriend and returning to England. Sophie writes back that she should come back and look him up.
While Sophie is still on vacation, the letter zips all the way to England, gets read by the grandmother (now widowed) and inspires her to instantly pack up and go to Italy with her grandson (Christopher Egan) in search of her old flame, only to run into Sophie.
The movie is an insult to David Remnick (sorry, Dave — The New Yorker’s editor is played by the thunderously jowled man-walrus Oliver Platt), to common sense (Sophie, Claire and the handsome grandson Charlie drive picturesquely all over Italy looking for the woman’s old boyfriend instead of picking up the telefono) and to the hacks over at Team Harlequin.
They must be wondering why their words barely earn enough to keep them in chamomile tea and comfy cardigans while lavishly rewarded Hollywood screenwriters are allowed to serve up lines like, “I am really, deeply, truly, passionately in love with you,” “Sophie, your writing is really good — no, it’s really, really, really good!” and (this one is about what it’s like to lose both parents in an accident at age 10), “It was a difficult time.”
Once Bernal starts spouting Felix Ungar lines and wanders off to bid in a wine auction while Charlie the grandson insults Sophie, the rest of the film comes into plain view. The story is as straight and obvious as raw spaghetti.
I was convinced I was being duped, that things could not possibly be this simple, that the movie couldn’t have been made without at least one big twist. Perhaps Redgrave would get arrested by lads from the International Criminal Court posing a few pointed questions about her little romantic-comedy infatuation with the PLO in the 1970s? But all that occurs is . . . obviousness.
For that, you may thank director Gary Winick, the nongenius (“13 Going on 30,” “Bride Wars”) who slathers the Italian scenes with an oozing, sun-dappled butteryness. Not to be left unspoken are such lines as, “Destiny wanted us to meet again,” “An angel brought you to me” and “When we are speaking of love, is [sic] never too late,” all delivered in an Italian accent.
Seyfried, whose huge-eyed vacuousness suggests two gray-blue zeppelins floating peacefully in a blank summer sky, and Egan (imagine Ryan Phillippe, subtract the note of ruthlessness and replace it with a twitty, stolid aspect suggesting a JC Penney pants model) may be the perfect actors to carry out this assignment: Neither is embarrassable.
Seyfried manages not to wince when her character boasts of a Brown degree — in Latin! — just seconds after mangling the meaning of “caveat emptor.” And Egan . . . well, let’s just say that when he dutifully clambers up a balcony, I wanted to congratulate him in the same way I wanted to shake hands with the moron who ran around on a baseball field until he got Tasered.