"Letters to Juliet": Movie Trailer Review

By our guest blogger, Kristen Lopez

As much as I despise romance films, there's something about Amanda Seyfried that makes me take a second look. The young actress always seems to bring light to otherwise ridiculous or off-beat stories and the trailer for her latest film, “Letters to Juliet,” suggests that the movie will put her skills to the test.

In the trailer, we see the story of Sofie (Seyfried), who travels to Verona, Italy with her boyfriend. While there, she volunteers to answer letters written to Juliet, the doomed lady of Shakespeare's story that fictionally lived in Verona. Sofie answers a letter from 1957 from a lady asking for advice after leaving her true love. When Sofie meets the writer, now an old woman, the duo, along with the woman's disenchanted grandson, travel to find the man who was left behind. As the group goes about their quest, Sofie starts to doubt her own relationship with her boyfriend--and possibly find her own chance at true love.

One can't say the story isn't creative: Young woman travels to Italy and answers letters as Juliet, the star-crossed lover of Shakespeare's tale. The thing to question is which love story is going to be the better of the two--the lost love of Vanessa Redgrave's character or the potential saccharine romance of Seyfried's story. The movie does seem a bit too cliche in the latter storyline--said girl realizes she's in a relationship that isn't satisfying and finds love with a surly individual she didn't expect. Scenes where her and the grandson (Christopher Egan) have their cutesy interludes seem ripped from other romance films and that might be where the story falters.

Seyfried can deliver the cute and romantic--“Mamma Mia” is perfect evidence for that--but if the story is too formulaic and boring it might collapse the film. The generational love story with Vanessa Redgrave and her abandoned love seems the stronger and more romantic of the two. A love story that crosses decades seems more genuine and true than a romantic liaison exacerbated by a romantic locale and forced surroundings. The quest of the old woman to find her true love seems so sweet, yet the trailer makes it seem like such a small part of the story when it probably shouldn't be. A great thing is that the trailer seems to be playing up the romantic locations quite well. Italy is usually gorgeously filmed and hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of the countryside in this movie. It also seems that singer Taylor Swift's song “Love Story” was written for this movie when it wasn't, but really could you see any other song accompanying this?

“Letters to Juliet” is an odd one. It doesn't seem to have anything interesting going for it, yet that generational love story is nagging because it has so much potential. Maybe once more clips are available to highlight the story, and audiences figure out which love story is going to be the main one, it'll be easier to determine whether this is a satisfying romance film or another in the endless drivel of the genre.

Letters to Juliet hits theaters May 7, 2010.

View the trailer for "Letters to Juliet" below. Thoughts?