The Love Letter

"Dearest, do you know how in love with you I am?" So begins an anonymously typed love letter that profoundly impacts the lives of several residents of a stereotypically quaint New England town in this romantic comedy based on the novel by Cathleen Schine. Kate Capshaw stars as Helen, a lonely divorced mother who first finds the letter and believes it was written to her. But by whom? Johnny (Tom Everett Scott), her twentysomething bookstore employee? George (Tom Selleck), the amiable, aw-shucks fireman who has carried a lifelong torch for her? Odd she doesn't even consider Ellen DeGeneres, who plays it--pardon the expression--straight as Janet, Helen's oversexed manager. The film does earn points for Helen's passionate affair with Johnny, which bucks the entrenched Hollywood convention of older men and younger women (Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow in A Perfect Murder; Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment; Woody Allen and anybody) But save for Blythe Danner, as Helen's mother, and the venerable Gloria Stuart (Rose the elder in Titanic), as her unconventional grandmother, all the broadly played colorful characters wouldn't pass muster on episodes of Picket Fences or Northern Exposure. Return to sender. Not recommended. (K. Lee Benson)