The Love Letter

In a scene in The Love Letter, a couple attend a "Keaton Festival"; when they discover that the honoree is not Michael or Diane but Buster, they walk out. So much for the Golden Age of Comedy. Not that this shaggy-dog romance, helmed with an off-kilter, Keatonish charm by Hong Kong director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, is such a poor substitute. Although it's contrived and by-the-numbers, its crotchety performances and goofball dialogue prevail over the schmaltz.

Harried, divorced bookstore owner Helen MacFarquhar (Kate Capshaw) finds the unaddressed, unsigned title missive between her sofa cushions -- and suddenly the small town of Loblolly-by-the-Sea (actually a generic Rockport) sprouts daffodils and potential soulmates. The device creaks, especially when the letter is left lying around, and it has the same general effect as the love potion in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The chief victims are Helen and summer temp Johnny (Tom Everett Scott, looking more and more like Tom Hanks's sexier younger brother), though stodgy old local fireman George (Tom Selleck) finds his torch for Helen rekindled too.

The older-woman/younger-man dynamic is a refreshing change, though it seems inevitable Helen will be punished somehow (life with Tom Selleck?). Very much a love letter from Capshaw, who produced, to herself (the locals jaws drop when she jogs through town), this saltwater candy might not be the equal of Buster, but it gives Diane and Michael a run for their money. At the Showcase and Starcase cinemas.
-- Peter Keough