Letter's To Juliet is another one of those films that come out for the ladies to go to instead of Iron Man 2 or Robin Hood. May has become well known not only for the start of the summer movie season, but the slow, well timed release of films geared toward the segment of the population that doesn't want to see Iron Man, but eagerly anticipate Sex and the City 2. I go back to that glorious summer when Monster-in-Law held the top spot at the box office until Revenge of the Sith was released. It's a way for everyone to have something to see at the movies.
Juliet stars Amanda Seyfried as Sophie, an aspiring writer who travels to Italy with her workaholic cook fiance for a "pre-honeymoon" that soon turns into a buying trip for the fiance. While exploring the city Sophie comes across the wall below the balcony of Juliet and the hundreds of letter left there each day by lonely hearts and the broken hearted. She soon discovers a group of women that answer the letters and becomes enthralled with them, eventually leading her to write to a star crossed lover whose letter was lost behind a brick fifty years before. Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), the writer of the letter, soon arrives on a quest to find her lost love Carlo (Franco Nero) with her pessimistic grand son Charlie (Christopher Egan) in tow.
I was actually surprised by this movie. It wasn't as much of a dud to watch as I had expected. True, the film is cliched as hell with the stereotypical dumped fiance in waiting character that seemed a little too obsessed with work and the negative Charlie who you knew would end up with Sophie in the end. I'm not putting spoiler tags on that because if you can't tell from the trailer then you have not seen any chick flicks in your entire existence. Otherwise it's an average romantic comedy in a sea of mediocre or worse romantic comedies. You can see what's going to happen a mile away, but it's still not a bad movie. The acting is ok, though Redgrave runs circles around the rest of the cast in terms of being a presence. As I said earlier, overall this is a film that doesn't make you cringe while watching it, which is a plus in my book.
One thing is assured when a horror film does big money at the box office- it will get a sequel (or a dozen) and that sequel will be a cheap imitation of the original. Typically they're made cheaply and bank on name recognition. It's the same formula to make a buck. Friday the 13th built an '80's franchise on this idea.
Which brings us to Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, which takes Wes Craven's concept and sticks a firecracker up it's wazoo. The film takes place five years after the original film with Jesse (Mark Patton) who now resides in Nancy's old room. He starts having nightmares about our favorite child murderer eventually becoming the body for Freddy's brain, allowing the Fredster to escape into the real world of S&M loving gym teachers and exploding parakeets.
This movie just flat out sucks. It's a thrown together piece of shit that really has nothing in common with the original other than Freddy Krueger. Wes Craven's brilliant concept becomes a side line that's eventually flushed down the toilet in this film. The brilliance is that Krueger could get you in the one thing that no one can run away from- your unconscious. In this film people are getting ripped apart left and right during waking hours because he has Jessie's body? Yet there's supernatural stuff allowing Krueger the ease of slicing the gym teacher like a ham. This film is a mess.
And the acting doesn't help either. Englund is still creepy as Freddy in this one, but the rest of the cast is strictly D grade cheap actors (excluding Clu Gallagher) that haven't been heard from since unless it's crap on TV. Directed by Jack Sholder, who would gives us a much better film called The Hidden a couple years after this, really doesn't wow us in any directorial skill. It's like an after school special. We also have to lay blame on writer David Chaskin, who must have written this in an outhouse because it is a foul piece of work. Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is basically gravy train trash that banked on the name and the character and little else.
(as I side note I have to add that Wes Craven refused to do a sequel because of the manipulation storyline and the fact he didn't want the film to spawn sequels. Ironically, this same year he directed a sequel to The Hills Have Eyes that is just as bad as this film)
