Co-stars Amanda Seyfried and Christopher Egan. (Getty Images/Robyn Beck)

In "Letters to Juliet," Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) and her fiancé Victor (Gael Garcia Bernal) live in New York City. They go on their pre-honeymoon honeymoon because Victor is opening up his Italian restaurant soon, and there will be no time after the wedding to travel. Sophie is a fact checker and aspiring writer at the New Yorker.

They go off to Verona and Sophie follows him around while he meets his restaurant suppliers and is brought to his knees every time he takes a bite of aged cheese, sips a glass of fine wine or goes on a hunt for truffles (but who wouldn't?).

Bernal's acting is comical, quirky and didn't belong in this movie. You know where their relationship is headed as soon as he makes her eat strands of raw pasta while she stands there unimpressed and unmoved by his excitement. The movie doesn't make him out to be the bad guy, just someone who's really, really into food and not much else.

Although, I looked forward to Bernal's scenes the most because while he was jumping up and down just for mushrooms, it still felt like his display was the most earnest out of all the other characters pining away for love (with the exception of Vanessa Redgrave).

Some especially flinching quotes from the movie were: "When we're speaking about love, it's never too late," "I am madly, deeply, truly, passionately in love with you," "It's destiny that we're here right now," and "Every minute has been so special."

Back in Verona, Sophie and Victor agree to do their own thing for a couple of days, "win-win" says Victor, and he goes off to a wine auction while she investigates a story.

The story involves Sophie finding a 50-year-old letter behind a brick in a wall in Verona. The wall is part of an alley that's underneath the famous terrace where Romeo and Juliet profess their love. Women write love letters asking for help, and pin them to the wall. Then the "secretaries," a group of women employed by the city of Verona, of Juliet take down the letters at the end of the day and write them back with advice on what to do.

Sophie befriends these secretaries and writes to Claire (Vanessa Redgrave), the writer of the letter, to find her long-lost love. Claire comes to Verona with her grandson, Charlie (Christopher Egan), they meet Sophie, and together they journey through Tuscany trying to find the person she lost, Lorenzo Bartollini (Franco Nero).

Sophie and Charlie snipe at each other through the movie, so you know that eventually they'll wind up as each other's soul mates. I found Charlie to be utterly bland, irritating and insincere. At one point they kiss, he apologizes the next day and Claire tries subtly to get them together. Sophie still has a fiancé through all this, but it's okay because Victor loves limp noodles more than her.

Vanessa Redgrave, on the other hand, is luminous. She says each sappy line with such ache and fervor, her blue eyes sad and hopeful, that it feels like I'm watching a tiny bit of truth and beauty in an otherwise terrible movie. She isn't trying to be better than the movie, she simply is.

Her true-life story about how she met Nero on the set of "Camelot" made more of an impression on me than the 105-minute Taylor Swift, Italian pop music infused movie I had to sit through. Nero was Lancelot to Redgrave's Guinevere. They fell in love, had a son, went their separate ways, and then married 40 years later after they had other lives with other loved ones. That's a real love story, and though "Letters to Juliet" mirrors their lives, it cheapens and makes superficial the premise of what's considered "true" love.