MOVIE REVIEWS: “LETTERS FROM JULIET”

With the testosterone-heavy Iron Man 2 and Robin Hood vying against one another this weekend, several critics, especially those of the female persuasion, are welcoming the arrival of Letters from Juliet. “There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours, writes Claudia Puig in USA Today. “Set in some stunning locales in Italy, Letters is a guilty pleasure that’s lighter on the guilt and heavier on the pleasure.” Joy Tipping in the Dallas Morning News writes that the star of the movie may be its locale. “If you can’t afford a European trip this summer, just go see Letters to Juliet, a charming romantic comedy set amid gorgeous Verona, Italy, and the northern Italian hills and valleys surrounding it. Cinematographer Marco Pontecorvo’s sun-drenched palette would be a perfectly sound reason to see this film, but happily it’s not the only one.” And Stephen Cole sums up in the Toronto Globe & Mail: “If nothing else, the film is inspired travelogue with a welcome, oddball sense of humor.” A.O. Scott offers this peculiar judgment: “It is a movie that is very nearly perfect without being especially good.” The problem, he explains, is that while it fulfills its ambitions, those ambitions are modest at best. “No hard feelings are risked, no feathers of audience sensitivity are ruffled, and as a result no memorable lines are uttered, no startling scenes unfold, and no character emerges toward whom you feel anything more than tepid good will.”