How Helen got her groove back

Produced by and starring Kate Capshaw, Mrs. Steven "Anywhere He Wants To" Spielberg, The Love Letter unfortunately spends most of its time seeking the charm it never quite finds. She plays Helen, owner of a little bookstore with more employees than customers in the mythical Northeastern seaboard town of Loblolly by the Sea (whose name is one of the more entertaining things about the film, even funnier when seen spelled out on a sign than it sounds tripping off the tongue). An amazingly desirable woman with no discernible love life, she gets in gear after finding an achingly beautiful love letter, both its writer and recipient anonymous, stuffed in her couch (the letter, not the writer and recipient). A succession of other townsfolk, including the store's randy manager (Ellen DeGeneres), then read this magical epistle, everyone assuming to be the intended object. Helen is so emboldened she beds a tall college student (Tom Everett Scott) hired for the summer because he can reach the higher shelves, and is in turn pursued by a an opera-loving fireman (Tom Selleck, looking all good-natured goofy in big glasses). It's for them to sort all this out, and figure out the letter's mystery.

Problem is, there's no there there. For a romantic comedy, this is one remarkably cool, dispassionate film. Events get no buildup; they just start, a bunch of non sequitur reactions leading nowhere believable. And considering it was helmed by an award-winning Hong Kong director of Chinese-language comedies, and scripted by the writer of the wonderful The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, it should have been more. As it is, the other most interesting thing about The Love Letter is the casting of Selleck, Mr. NRA, and DeGeneres, Ms. GAY (although she plays a straight character here, and he did gay in his last big movie, In & Out). Maybe things would have heated up more if Rosie O'Donnell had come along. C-

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