Where to watch The Love Letter
1 Star
The life of a provincial town becomes stormy after the appearance of an anonymous love letter.
The Love Letter is a cinematic trivia question. What movie opened against The Phantom Menace over Memorial Day weekend during the summer of 1999? That would be a borderline inept romantic comedy starring Kate Capshaw, and Mrs. Steven Spielberg, and produced by her husband’s production company. Hoping to work as counterprogramming, The Love Letter is an unabashedly sentimental tale with a low-stakes concept that is so inconsequential that it quickly fades from the memory shortly after the credits role.
The film’s simplistic story fumbled by director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, a surprise under Spielberg’s watchful eye, who cannot establish tone and consistency; none of the ‘big’ moments work. The Love Letter is an inconsequential movie that utterly wastes the talents of its impressive cast members and ninety minutes of the viewer’s time. The producer’s idea to open this film against Star Wars in a counter-programing move was also a failure, reducing The Love Letter to a trivia question for film buffs.
Directed by: Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Written by: Cathleen Schine, Maria Maggenti
Starring: Kate Capshaw, Tom Everett Scott, Tom Selleck