"Letters to Juliet"

"Letters to Juliet" has a lot of things going for it, but one of the best is the scenery—it takes place in beautiful parts of Italy. It was nice to see this on the big screen. The story ends predictably, however, and so the scenery might be one of the main reasons to see the movie in the theaters.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried, "Dear John") is in Verona, Italy with her fiancé, Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal, "The Motorcycle Diaries"). Unfortunately, he is much more interested in meeting all of the vendors for his new restaurant than he is with hanging out with Sophie, and she is left to wander the streets of Verona. She goes to Juliet's house and finds that many women write to "Juliet" and post their letters on a wall in her garden; later, she sees a woman gathering all of the letters. Curious, she follows her, and meets the Secretaries of Juliet: women who write back to the heartaches and love problems that the women have written and left on the wall. When Sophie finds a letter stuck in the wall from 1957, she decides to write back, and it is there that the story really begins.

Vanessa Redgrave ("Atonement") is excellent as Claire, the woman who wrote the letter from 1957, and the attractive Christopher Egan (TV's "Kings") is great as Charlie, Claire's bad-tempered British grandson. Sophie and Charlie dislike each other at first, but their feelings toward each other change throughout the movie, of course.

I would say Maybe see this movie. It's not quite as interesting as the trailer made it seem, but by this point you have probably realized that trailers for a movie are designed to showcase its best parts. The film's ending was cute, and there were a few comedic scenes in the film as well. If you are a fan of Amanda Seyfried, like I am, or even just a sucker for good scenery, you will enjoy this movie; non-fans of Seyfried should pick a different film.

"Letters to Juliet" arrives in theaters on May 14th.