LETTERS TO JULIET Directed by Gary Winick. Starring Amanda Seyfried, Christopher Egan, Gael Garcia Bernal, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, Fabio Testi, Oliver Platt 15A cert, gen release, 105 min

IN AN early episode of The Simpsons, Homer, briefly smart, spoils the ending of a comedy called Love Is Nice by announcing that Julia Roberts is sure to fall into the arms of the charming renegade. "Aw! I thought she'd end up marrying that rich snob," somebody in the audience moans.

Welcome to Letters to Juliet. The huge-eyed Amanda Seyfried – so ubiquitous that, every time I go the loo, I expect to see her squatting blondly behind the cistern – plays the bouncy fiancée of a wildly enthusiastic chef with an enthusiasm for Italian truffles.

Given breath by Gael García Bernal in full-on deranged-puppy mode, the chef proves slightly less attentive than expected when they travel to Verona for a pre-nuptial vacation. Amanda, a fact-checker for The New Yorker, then becomes interested in the letters that, over centuries, have been sent by real people to Shakespeare’s Juliet.

One document in particular, written decades earlier by a love-struck teen, attracts her attention and, after mailing a reply, she encounters its grey-haired sender. It’s good-old Venessa Redgrave and she has her (sorry for the delay) rich snob of a grandson in tow. The three then set off in search of the Italian chap with whom Vanessa once enjoyed a liaison.

Now, look here. There’s plenty wrong with this film. A good half hour is taken up with indifferently composed shots of pretty meadows and prettier villas. Too many of the families encountered along the way appear to have emerged from Dolmio commercials. Redgrave’s proper acting doesn’t really mesh with the semi-audible chirping that emerges from Ms Seyfried.

All this is, however, as nought when set beside the film's most glaring, clunking problem: no sane person anywhere – whether old, young, male, female, gay, straight or asexual – is going to root for Amanda to get with the posh snob over Bernal's charming nutter. Yet that is what Letters to Julietasks of us. Percival Smythe-Buggery (I think that's his name), played badly by an Australian named Christopher Egan, turns his nose up when Amanda uses unintelligible slang such as "for real". Gael García Bernal is, well, Gael García Bernal, for Pete's sake.

Anyway, you do have to admit that, though terrible in many, many ways, Letters to Julietdoes, eventually, achieve such supernatural soppiness that it gains a kind of syrupy transcendence. You have to take your hat off to it. Then you have to get sick in your hat.