Letters to Juliet is the prototypical romantic comedy, from the awkward meet-cute to the conflict between two loves to the cheesy finale. And quite frankly, the formula works. It was a light, enjoyable flick with charismatic characters and playful hearstring-tugging. The story follows Sophie (Seyfried) with her fiancé Victor (García Bernal) in Verona on a pre-wedding honeymoon in preparation for the opening of his new restaurant. Instead of spending time with Sophie, Victor ends up trying all the foods and wines from Italy on his own, while she begins to get involved with the "secretaries of Juliet." Strangers write letters to Juliet and attach them to a wall, and the secretaries collect them all and write back. Sophie finds one letter that had been lost for 50 years and writes back, only to have the original writer Claire (Redgrave) show up with her grandson Charlie (Egan) on a quest for her long-lost love.
As you can imagine (and visibly see in the trailer), the old woman finds her long lost love and the young girl starts to get close to the young boy. I'm sure you can guess how the movie will end, but the point of the movie is precisely that you get exactly what you want out of watching it. I could complain about minor details like the slow pacing, sloppy writing, and confusing camerawork time after time, but the technical details simply don't matter for this movie. The movie's charm is in its inhabitants, and their relationships with each other, and that is really something to cherish about this film. The people are friendly and funny (how Claire treats her grandson, how Victor talks about food) and their connections--while far from unique--are precisely what we want our own connections to be. And that is where this film succeeds; it gives us exactly what we want, and it does so in the beautiful country of Italy.IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892318/