The summer blockbuster movie season is upon us with a batch of sequels ready to satiate avid moviegoers but this week Hollywood is also offering up a couple of nice romantic dramas pitched to their newly rediscovered wedge audience—teenage fan girls, their moms, grandmas and, of course, their gay doppelgangers (and we know who we are).
Both Just Wright (an urban romance starring lesbian favorite Queen Latifah and rapper Common) and the lush Letters to Juliet (with Amanda Seyfried, Gael Garcia Bernal, Vanessa Redgrave and British newcomer Christopher Egan as the resident male eye candy) are about as fresh as a bouquet of wilted spring flowers. However, it’s not inventiveness or originality that makes both movies so endearing and welcome in the coming season of movie cacophony. It’s the familiarity and old fashioned-ness of both that is the key to their appeal.
In Just Wright Latifah plays Leslie Wright (hence the cutsie-poo title), a physical therapist who dates on a regular basis but can’t find a man to settle down with. However, her cousin, Morgan (Paula Patton, who played the lesbian teacher in Precious), is a gorgeous man-trap determined to snag pro basketball player Scott McKnight (Common) and jump into the good life in one fell swoop.
But it’s Leslie who “meets cute” with Scott at a gas station and gets a coveted invitation to his birthday party. Naturally, she brings along Morgan and, before you can say “Ivana Trump,” the hunter has captured her prey. When Scott hurts his knee and needs reconditioning he hires a comely physical therapist, making Morgan see red. “Some women have gaydar, I have ‘hodar,'” Morgan tells Leslie, insisting that she come onboard to do the job. Soon Morgan’s bored while staying home, and the relationship begins to teeter—just as love vibes and hormones are rising between Scott and Leslie, who has been nursing a secret desire for him all along.
Romantic complications ensue on the bumpy road to love with plenty of action on the basketball court thrown in for sports fans as well. Latifah, as always, brings an enormous amount of goodwill and humor to every scene. She’s become adept at making the thinnest movie work (remember Last Holiday?) and audiences respond overwhelmingly to her. She has enough good chemistry with Common to make you believe that she’s really falling for him and, boy, is he easy on the eyes. Patton does what she can with her two-dimensional part and looks sensational while Pam Grier, Phylicia Rashad and others are on hand to offer support in tissue-thin roles.
Letters to Juliet, the other romantic drama on tap this week, gives us Amanda Seyfried, who tries to fill the void left by Reese Witherspoon. (Where did she go?) Seyfried now returns to the lush romance territory of Mamma Mia (sans the Abba songs). She plays Sophie, a Manhattanite who travels to Italy with fiancé Victor (Bad Education’s Bernal) for a “pre-honeymoon.” But he’s distracted by business involving the impending opening of his Italian restaurant back home so Sophie heads to the shrine of Juliet, where lovers have left letters looking for answers to their broken-hearted queries for centuries. A researcher for the New Yorker who wants to write for the magazine, Sophie senses a story when she discovers that several Italian Ann Landers are answering the letters.
The group invites Sophie to join them and when Sophie digs out a letter caught behind a stone in the shrine written decades earlier by the lovelorn Claire (Redgrave), she decides to answer it. Soon Claire, now widowed, turns up along with her grandson, Charlie (Egan, who looks like a young Heath Ledger), an uptight crank who excoriates Sophie for kicking up the dust of granny’s memories. But Sophie and Claire are determined to track down Claire’s old beau, Lorenzo, and the picture becomes a travelogue through Italy’s gorgeous countryside. Of course, as the quest continues Charlie slowly begins to thaw and our gorgeous blond heroine is faced with a romantic Sophie’s choice.
Though the movie, directed by Gary Winnick (Bride Wars), is a bath in schmaltz from beginning to end, it has Redgrave, who brings instant depth to the picture. And when Redgrave, the aging, still-beautiful Juliet, meets up again with her one-time Romeo and we see that it is her real-life love, Franco Nero—the passion between the two is palpable and practically leaps off the screen. This canny bit of casting on the part of the producers is the movie’s greatest triumph.
Film note:
—Cinema/Chicago, the folks that bring you the Chicago International Film Festival, are back for the 7th Annual Summer Screening International Program, a slate of 19 free movies to be shown on a weekly basis through Sept. 8 at the Cultural Arts Center in the Claudia Cassidy Theater, 77 E. Randolph. Films are shown Wednesday evenings at 6:30 p.m., and this year most will have a 2 p.m. Saturday matinee screening as well. The series offers filmgoers a chance to experience little-known foreign films in a theatrical setting. Highlights include My Year Without Sex from Australia and the period noir The Signal from Argentina. The 2002 queer-themed biopic Madame Sata from Brazil is on the bill for Wed., May 12, at 6:30 p.m. and yours truly will conduct the post-screening discussion. See www.cinemachicago.org.
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