REVIEW: Letters to Juliet

CHEESY, NOT BREEZY

If you like play-by-numbers rom coms set in impossibly beautiful places, you might take to Gary Winick's Letters To Juliet. Or then if you worship Vanessa Redgrave, the grand old dame of British cinema. If you're a fan of Gael Garcia Bernal though (like your's truly) and expect the filmmaker to give the gorgeous Mexican actor a meaty role (and the girl, in the end, of course), you're in for gross disappointment.

From the first frame, Bernal's Viktor, fiancé to Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, named after her character in Mamma Mia, and acting just the same wide-eyed dimwit) is a caricature of an uninteresting restaurateur who's happier scouring the Italian countryside for cheese and wines than romancing his soon-to-be wife. The couple is on a pre-wedding honeymoon to the most picturesque country on earth, and Viktor just can't find time for Sophie. She, on the other hand, a professional fact-checker for The New Yorker magazine, gets bored waiting around, starts exploring the city and comes upon 'Juliet's balcony', under which women write letters of love and heartbreak. 

The city of Verona has apparently employed a posse of women to reply to these letters. Sophie digs out a 50-year-old gem written by a British girl on an exchange trip to Italy, wedged in the bricks, and decides to write back as Juliet. Predictably, the old lady finds the letter, and, with reasonably good-looking grandson Charlie (Chris Egan, he's okay, but clearly no Bernal) in tow, arrives in Italy. Sophie's professional skills as fact-checker are put to use to trace down dozens of Lorenzos, till, expectedly, they land up at the doorstep of a farmer who makes a grand entry on horseback.

Along the way, Sophie's also warmed up to Charlie (after they've taken an instant dislike for each other -- that inevitable rom com staple), Viktor is still obsessing about wines, and Redgrave has been benignly watching the show from the back seat of the car, only nudging them in the right direction now and then.

This is one of those 'nothing' films. You don't gain much, nor lose anything watching it. But that's not why I go to the movies.