"Letters to Juliet" is a torn-between-two-lovers tossoff that makes a fatal miscalculation. Well, more than one, but first things first.
If you are going to have Amanda Seyfried choose between suitors (Aroogha! Spoiler Warning) do not cast the more interesting and lively actor in the loser role. Ladies, I put it to you. Bachelor No. 1 is the handsome and vivacious Gael Garcia Bernal, charismatic star of "Y tu Mama Tambien" and "The Motorcycle Diaries." Bachelor No. 2 is Christopher Egan, an English yutz who has done some TV. Which one would you want to be pinned beneath?
Seyfried plays a magazine researcher on vacation in Italy with Bernal, her restaurateur fiance. She falls in with a group of ladies who mail advice to visitors who leave notes at the Verona home of Juliet Capulet. Discovering a decades-old note in which Vanessa Redgrave sighs over her lost Italian love, Seyfried urges her to seek him out and tags along as she scours Tuscany in search of Lorenzo. Doing the driving is Redgrave's priggish, disapproving nephew, Egan.
The film consists of the trio driving around, knocking on doors, and not finding their man. Not right away, at least. Seyfried and Egan banter abrasively. For all the romantic heat they project, they may as well be acting opposite green-screen holograms.
This one burns going down, like cheap Chianti. Woodenly directed by Gary Winick (the felon responsible for last year's hideous "Bride Wars").
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LETTERS TO JULIET
1 star
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Gale Garcia Bernal, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Egan
Directed by: Gary Winick
Rated PG for brief rude behavior and sensual images, some language and incidental smoking.
