The Love Letter (1999)

Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan; Starring Kate Capshaw, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Selleck, Tom Everett Scott, Julianne Nicholson, Blythe Danner, Gloria Stuart, Geraldine McEwan, Patrick Donnelly, Erik Jensen, Lucas Hall, Walter Covell, and Margaret Ann Brady

Far from perfect is this little film that is getting attention for going wide against Star Wars. If I had my way, Star Wars would out gross this, but I’m sure that will not happen.

The Love Letter is about a small Massachusetts bay town where every neighbor is close and gossip runs abound. Enter a bookstore in this town run by three women and a man, connected by one thing: a love letter. When Helen (Capshaw) finds the letter in the coach, she comes to believe that it is for her from either store worker Johnny (Scott) or ex-beau fireman George (Selleck). Then attempting to entice him, she invites Johnny over to dinner and he runs upon the letter thinking that it is from Helen. This is fine if it was not for the fact that the youngest worker at the store, Jennifer (Nicholson), has a crush on Johnny. Then the owner of the store, Janet (DeGeneres), finds the letter on the floor and thinks that it must be for her from George. This tangle goes on for over an hour and fifteen minutes before the film falls for an idiotic climax.

The only thing really refreshing about The Love Letter is that it is a little more adult oriented than I thought. At times it looked like a comedic A Walk on the Moon, though with much less nudity (though, did we really need to see Capshaw’s derrière?). The performances range from good (Danner, Selleck, Stuart) to mediocre (Capshaw, DeGeneres) to all out awful (Scott, Nicholson). The script is really weak as I cannot remember cracking a grin at this comedy once and the direction is simply by the book. But I will admit that this film is better than the only film to go against The Lost World three years ago: a little Griffin Dunne film called Addicted to Love.