Letters to Juliet

Ok so let me preface this blog post with a short blurb. So I love getting together with my buddy buddies, and tonight was no exception. Whitney and Willy were awesome enough to invite me and my beautiful fiance to this movie after she, Whit, had gotten some free tickets. Andy and Bri accompanied us as well, grouping together four(five if you count Jen Buddy) of my favorite people ever. It was great seeing the Wilburs and the Bergesons. They are so damn sexy! So I thank them for the invite. Love you guys.

That being said, this movie was more terrible than the Elephant Man's silhouette. If i could compare it to a bag of prison weiners I would. Oh wait, I just did. First of all the plot was your standard brainless chick flick. Girl is struggling in her work because she has high ambitions. She is also coping with a busy fiance who has different aspirations, which in this movie happen to be the opening of an Italian restaurant, Bucco di Who Gives a Rat's A$$. They make their way to Verona, Italy, the world's most romantic place and also home of the legendary Romeo & Juliet, for a pre-Honeymoon love trip. Gael Garcia-Bernal who plays her success driven fiance, uses this romantically disguised getaway as an excuse to buoy his ingredient providers. Bored yet? Too bad this isn't a scratch and sniff anthrax blog.

So she, Sophie as played by Amanda Seyfried, goes to the famed spot where Romeo so eloquently professed his love to the tasty, jail-bait aged Juliet. The wall below the balcony is reserved for the letters of those longing souls, ovaries included, who seek love and the bringer of its bounty, a.k.a. Mr. Right. She ends up finding Juliet's Secretaries, those lovely women who take the time to answer these letters. She finds a letter from a Claire Smith, Vanessa Redgrave, from 1957 that confesses not only the love she has for her Italian Lover, Lorenzo, but the fear she faces in risking her future on "true love". Now let me interject here and confess that I love Vanessa Redgrave, she was a definite upside of this movie. She is an actress who carries herself with poise and elegance. She was a winner when this script was clearly written by two losers. Anyway, Sophie, responding to this antique letter, with that keen writing ability to which her editor, Oliver Pratt, is oblivious; convinces Claire to return to Italy to find her lost love of more than 50 years. Asleep? I am and I am writing this review. She returns with her grandson Charlie, Chris Egan, and they embark on an epic journey.

A journey that I feel is only surpassed by that of Jason and his Argonauts... Get it, my sarcasm? I will not ruin this movie, by giving any more details, for those brave enough to sit through the whole damn thing. I will say the cinematography in this film was well done, with many beautiful shots of the Italian countryside and the general framing of the characters. I did not care about any of the character development or how the thrown together story was gonna end. I left more disinterested than an atheist at a Baptist Revival. I did not want to set the movie on fire, but rather the jackass that concocted this skewed romantic tale.

All in all this movie gets a 10 on the 1-Who Gives a $hi! scale. Don't go see it, take my word for it. I will say that Chris Egan could be a possible Heath Ledger in waiting, sans the hilly bum rush.

--ZO--