There are those in the ‘hot young Hollywood’ set who make their name from eye-catching magazine covers, and those who get our attention based on their output on cinema screens. Whilst it is fair to say Amanda Seyfried is no stranger to the front cover, she has in the main relied on a solid career that has ranged from the cheesy (‘Mamma Mia!’) to the scandalous (‘Chloe’, ‘Jennifer’s Body’).

Her latest is ‘Letters To Juliet’, in which she plays Sophie, a woman neglected by her fiancée whilst on holiday in Italy, who stumbles across the alleged house of Juliet Capulet, immortalised in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo & Juliet’. At the house are thousands of letters from admirers, telling of lost loves and collected by the ‘secretaries of Juliet’, three women who respond to the letters. Sophie finds a hidden, 50-year-old unanswered letter from an English woman (Vanessa Redgrave), and when she responds the woman is inspired to come to Italy to find her lost love, with the help of her grandson (Chris Egan) and Sophie herself.

Lightweight is certainly an apt description of the plot, but even giving it this disclaimer it’s hard to think of a more poorly executed film, thanks largely to a tragic script that will have you laughing in all the wrong places. Even with a considerable cast it’s difficult to overlook such poor writing and lazy national stereotypes, and even harder to fathom how they assembled these actors considering the story seems ripped from the pages of a bad romance novel.

Much of the film rests of Seyfried’s shoulders, and to be fair she doesn’t do too much wrong as she gives wistful looks into the Italian sunset. More baffling is Vanessa Redgrave’s role. She is still absolutely engrossing to watch, and one of the few reasons this isn’t a complete bomb is that even when asked to deliver the most ludicrous of lines (‘one of life's great luxuries is having one's hair brushed’) it’s tender and engaging. The less said about the male leads the better- Australian Egan is stiff and hard to like throughout as Sophie’s inevitable love interest, and Gael Garcia Bernal is a flapping Mediterranean fool who flies in and out of the story, almost looking like he himself can’t believe he agreed to play this part.

A rom-com that isn’t funny, or actually very romantic in Sophie’s case, but lifted ever so slightly by Redgrave who lifts the nonsense to something that is watchable in places. A whimsical summer romance that you may struggle to look back upon fondly.