Letters to Juliet
Two Love Stories, Only One is Believable
The Story:
Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is a young American woman who travels to the city of Verona, home of the star-crossed lover Juliet Capulet of Romeo and Juliet fame. When her fiancee to busy with his business rather than spending a vacation time with her, Sophie joins a group of volunteers who respond to letters to Juliet seeking advice about love.
After answering one letter dated 1951, she inspires its author, Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), to travel to Italy in search of her long-lost love and sets off a chain of events that will bring a love into both their lives unlike anything they ever imagined.
Release Date: May 14, 2010
Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Directed By: Gary Winick (13 Going on 30, Charlotte’s Web, Bride Wars)
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Chris Egan, Vanessa Redgrave, Gael García Bernal, Franco Nero
Budget: $30,000,000
Gross Revenue: $53,021,560 (USA) $80,000,000 (worldwide)
Review:
Victor and Sophie choose their “pre-honeymoon” at the beautiful Verona in Italy. Unfortunately, Victor is too busy with his business that he forgets why they were traveling at the first place. Alone, Sophie is wandering the city when she sets foot at the infamous La Casa di Giuletta. Here, women write letters and put in on the wall, hoping that someday Juliet would answer their love problems.
Sophie later finds out a 50-years unanswered letter, and the other volunteers encourage her to answer it. After reading the reply from Sophie, the letter’s author, Claire, travels all the way from London to Italy with her grandson Charlie to find her first love that she mentioned on the letter.
If you read the above plot, I bet you can easily predict the outcome of this movie. Yes, it’s a typical Hollywood’s romantic film, only that this one is set on beautiful city of Verona and Siena. When the story is no longer important, the cast will decide whether a movie is worth watching or not.
About that, we can say that senior actress Vanessa Redgrave is dominating this film. She looks beautiful in her age, and the audience will easily believe that she really in love with this Lorenzo, a guy that she last seen about 50 years ago. There’s a strong reason for it! Lorenzo Bartolini is played by Franco Nero, Redgrave’s husband in real life. They both were first falling in love in the 60s, and then separated for so many years and having relationship with other persons, before married in 2006. So, this film is like an autobiography of their love life.
How about the other love story? Having a journey together to find Lorenzo, Sophie and Charlie are eventually falling in love. Too bad that there are no real sparks between them, making it impossible to the audience to believe that they really love each other. What makes it worst, there are no memorable dialogues that we’re gonna remember from this movie.
Whether you like this film or not, you’re gonna love the scenery. One more strong point is the soundtrack. Many beautiful songs that will bring nostalgic moments. Some of them in Italian language, such as the infamous Quando, Quando, Quando, which although you don’t understand the meaning, will still be very cozy for the ears.
My Rating: B-
IMDb user rating: 6.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes meter: 40%
Metacritic: 50/100
Yahoo! critics: C+
Yahoo! users: A-
Your Ratings: 
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Note that ratings and gross revenue are based from when this review was written, so the values might already changed by now.
