The Love Letter

The Love Letter

**

Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray

Bookshops must have aphrodisian properties. What happened in Notting Hill and You've Got Mail happens here, except Kate Capshaw's summer romance is with a 20-year-old student (Tom Everett Scott).

It is not entirely her fault. A pseudo Shakespearean device is used in a matchmaking role. Capshaw finds a scrumpled, typed love letter in the folds of the sofa at the shop and assumes it has been left there by her new young assistant. This letter is read by others later, always discovered by chance and assumed it refers to the finder, resulting (sigh) in a whole lotta lovin'.

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The film has a plot that publishers of romantic fiction would reject as too soppy. Tom Selleck, looking darker and chunkier, drives around in a fireman's truck, having reached the age when younger guys make the play. Capshaw jogs and looks tense. Everett Scott scampers like a love-sick puppy. If he wasn't so innocent, he might be gay. Now, that would be a movie... Maybe not.

Reviewed on: 19 Jan 2001
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A bookseller finds a letter down the sofa and thinks it's a profession of love from her new assistant.
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Director: Peter Chan

Writer: Mara Maggenti

Starring: Kate Capshaw, Blythe Danner, Ellen DeGeneres, Julianne Nicholson, Tom Everett Scott, Tom Selleck, Gloria Stuart, Bill Buell, Alice Drummond, Erik Jensen, Margaret Ann Brady, Geraldine McEwan

Year: 1999

Runtime: 88 minutes

BBFC: 15 - Age Restricted

Country: US

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