The recipe for a good chick flick (not great, mind you) is simple and finite– a well known actress, an attractive Australian actor and perhaps Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” to top the whole thing off with whipped cream. The whipped cream is a little unnecessary, but overall “Letters to Juliet” is a sweet, relaxing chick flick.
Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried) is a “Fact Checker” for The New Yorker magazine and longs to be a writer. She lives in New York City with her overexcited Italian fiancé and they decide to take a pre-honeymoon to Venice, Italy. In Venice the fiancé mainly stays out of the picture while Sophie ventures out to find a wall of letters written by women about their relationships with men that are ‘to Juliet’ from the play “Romeo and Juliet”. Four women answer these letters and they call themselves ‘Juliet’s secretaries’. Sophie is soon part of the crew of these women. When she finds a letter from 50 years ago, she decides to answer it. The woman she writes to (Vanessa Redgrave) had left an Italian man, Lorenzo Bartollini, whom she had fallen in love with during a summer when she was 15. She decides to return to Italy to find the love of her life 50 years later, accompanied by her not so eager grandson Charlie (Christopher Egan). Lo and behold, Charlie and Sophie don’t exactly hit it off in the beginning, but soon they fall in love themselves in a pretty predictable fashion. A few twists and turns later, they end up together and live happily ever after.
So perhaps it’s predictable, and there are far too many scenes about finding the ‘true’ Lorenzo Bartollini (although the first few were funny). However, between scenes of breathtaking Italian scenery and Amanda Seyfried’s long blonde hair this was definitely a chick flick worth seeing—for people into seeing chick flicks. For those who are not, however, then they may find that the middle is somewhat lagging and predictable, and that some of the scenes are a little too mawkish. I would like to direct them towards ‘Iron Man 2’ or ‘Robin Hood’ instead of beating up on a not dazzling but comforting movie.
The love story itself is the best part. The very developed characters of Sophie and Charlie reach a level of romantic chemistry appropriate for a chick flick, and the Italian countryside was delightful to behold (along with Amanda Seyfried’s flaxen hair). It was a relaxing 105 minutes and although Lorenzo and Vanessa Redgrave do not have the romantic spark and quickness that Sophie and Charlie do, it provides for somewhat of a loose plot. The part that made this movie special was that it dove into a hate relationship that at some fragile point turned into love. This fragile point was well executed by director Gary Winick and provided the film a smooth finish of fated love (as explored in both Romeo and Juliet and Letters to Juliet) and Italian country sides to top the entire cake off with icing. A ‘dolce’ film to say in the least!