At the Movies

by Esther McCarthy

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ALL OUT OF LOVE

LETTERS TO JULIET (PG) starstar

Romance yarn will make you yawn

THE STARS: Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Gael Garcia Bernal, Chris Egan, Franco Nero.

THE STORY: A young American student named Sophie (Seyfried) travels to Verona and works as a volunteer who replies to letters addressed to Shakepeare's Juliet seeking advice about love. But when she comes across an emotional tale of lost romance from fifty years earlier, an intrigued Sophie sets about tracking down the couple and reuniting them.

LAME: Amanda SeyfriedAmanda Seyfried has a thing for letter writing.

Just months after we saw her penning love notes to Channing Tatum in Dear John, here she is putting pen to paper again in this whimsical romantic drama.

Get that girl a mobile phone.

The likeable Seyfried plays Sophie, a young American who travels to Verona in Italy, the city in which the love story Romeo & Juliet was set.

She heads there for a romantic holiday with her fiancé (Bernal).

While in Verona, she meets and joins a group of volunteers who reply to letters traditionally left by members of the public seeking advice in their love lives.The letters, left at the house where Juliet was supposed to have lived, are posted to the wall by lovelorn fans of the classic play.

Juliet is fascinated when she learns that a group of women collects the letters every day and responds to each and every one.

When Sophie finds a letter that was written and lost for almost 50 years, she feels compelled to reply. The letter was penned by a young Englishwoman who fell in love with an Italian man but took the safe bet and returned home rather than eloping with him.

The answer she receives is so touching it inspires its author Claire (Redgrave) to travel to Verona with her sceptical grandson (Egan) to find the man, Lorenzo, she left behind so many years before.

Fascinated at the prospect of reigniting a romance lost five decades earlier, Sophie joins Claire as they wander the hills of Tuscany in search of the elusive Lorenzo.

Weepy

It's a safe bet to say that if you're a big fan of, say, the Saw series, you shouldn't bother heading anywhere near Letters to Juliet.

Likewise if your taste veers towards indie, arthouse or action-driven flicks, this witless mushfest will bring you out in a rash.

DEAD LETTER DAY: Amanda Seyfried and Chris EganSeriously, this is such a weepy it makes PS I Love You look like Die Hard.

It beats you into submission with its soppy backstories, yearnings for love lost and poorly-drawn but endearing characters.

Of these, the best is Seyfried, who survives delivering some of the hammiest lines of dialogue I've heard in a film for a long time to make Sophie likeable. I've liked Seyfried ever since Mean Girls but she needs to choose stronger roles if she wants to tap into her true potential.

Egan, too, aims to instil some comedy into the film as the Brit who has a love hate relationship with Sophie but ends up coming off like an early Hugh Grant, except not as funny.

The real winner here is the Italian countryside which looks lush and absolutely gorgeous up on the big screen.

THE VERDICT: If you fancy some unashamed and undemanding romance in a pretty setting, this is for you. But even the mushiest movie goers could well find this too schmaltzy and predictable to really ring true.

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