CINEMA: Nights in Rodanthe

Novelist Nicholas Sparks was responsible for romantic weepie Message In A Bottle starring Kevin Costner and Robin Wright Penn. Nights is based on another of his novels and is basically Message In A Bottle MkII, although less about boats than a frankly ridiculous boarding house built on a beach in the coastal town of Rodanthe, North Carolina.

This is where single mum Adrienne (Diane Lane) arrives to look after the property while her mate who owns it is off on a romantic assignation. The only boarder is Dr Paul Flanner (Richard Gere) and Adrienne at first finds him rather standoffish, but then a major storm comes in and leaves them stranded by themselves. During a howling gale the pair find solace in eachothers’ company and the film gets more clichéd and banal by the minute. This is a great shame because the acting of both Lane and Gere is exemplary, it’s just the material they have to work with is so trite and predictable they can’t raise the film above its frankly second rate quality.

There hasn’t been a really good romantic weepie in ages and this film certainly doesn’t change that fact.      Dee Pilgrim

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