Safe Haven: A Review (Review #540)

SAFE HAVEN

Even by the shockingly low standards a Nicholas Sparks novel has, Safe Haven is particularly abysmal.  Safe Haven has not one, but TWO stupid and illogical twists that are insulting to the audience's intelligence.  It also has a lethargy to the story and two amazingly boring leads who either can't act or can't be bothered to. 

Katie (Julianne Hough) flees Boston after a brutal attack of some kind (the opening is a little vague) and boards a bus to Atlanta.  She flees Tierney (David Lyons), a persistent police officer determined to bring her in.  She eventually finds herself in Southport, North Carolina, and deliberately misses the bus to stay in this idyllic small town.  She quickly gets a job as a waitress at a local fish shop, a home at a safe distance from people (even if a woman named Jo--Cobie Smulders--lives close enough to start a hesitant friendship), and raises the attention of local hottie/widower Alex (Josh Duhamel).  Alex, who runs the bus stop/convenience store, has two children: adorable Lexie (Mimi Kirkland) and somewhat sour Josh (Noah Lomax).  For a widower he's quickly smitten with our lovely, who at first stays far away. 

Soon, however, Katie starts thawing, and she and Alex quickly fall in love.  It doesn't help that she carries this terrible secret, but so far she's bonding with the kids and Alex.  However, the obsessive detective will not give up, and he sends out an APB for an "Erin Tierney" as a person of interest for a murder charge.  We now get the first shocking twist...

...the alcoholic Tierney is really Katie's HUSBAND!  Using his powers, he keeps searching for Katie, whom she had stabbed in self-defense as she fled into the night.  Eventually he is discharged for drinking on the job (disguising vodka for water), but not before he learns she took the bus to Atlanta.  With that in mind, he drives drunk down the Eastern Seaboard until arriving at the Fourth of July festivities in Southport, North Carolina.

Katie, having been discovered, at first attempts to get away, but on threatening Lexie she pretends to want to go with him to Boston.  Still too late, as Tierney has set Alex's business on fire, where Lexie is trapped in what was "Mom's Room", where among his souvenirs Alex keeps letters written by his late wife for future events (Josh on Graduation, Lexie on her Wedding Day).  Alex, who sees the building a'blaze while shooting off fireworks, comes to the rescue and Katie shoots Tierney in the struggle.

With the 'bad man/obstacle' out of the way, Katie and Alex can now be together.  Alex then presents Katie with a letter addressed "For Her".  It was a letter written by Alex's wife to the woman who would take her place, and no we get the second shocking twist...

...Jo was really the ghost of Alex's wife!

For the life of me I cannot understand how Nicholas Sparks can be so popular when all his stories are A.) so similar to each other and B.) trash.   I have become convinced that Sparks has a template which he uses with every story, changes a few things, and then releases it to his fans and eager film producers willing to make money off sap for saps.

We have a beautiful but troubled woman (usually a woman) who meets a beautiful but lonely man (usually man).  Someone in the lonely person's life has died (death is a powerful tool in Sparks' arsenal).  There tends to be adorable children (I don't recall any teenager children save perhaps in The Last Song, but since the younger set are the troubled and beautiful people respective I cannot be certain they were teens).  There also tend to be elders of one of the lovers, who offers either advise or words of wisdom as to the obvious attraction Lover A. has to Lover B. Eventually there will be lovemaking, which will be remarkably chaste. There is usually some obstacle to our lovers, almost always in the form of a 'bad man', someone who wants the beautiful but troubled woman for himself.  Eventually the 'bad man' does something criminal and meets his own demise, which will free the lovers to be united.

Oh, yes, one more thing.  This bucolic world will always be in the South and will be a sort of Aryan fantasyland where despite being south of the Mason-Dixon Line there are no black people to be found.  There may be the occasional African-American somehow wandering around a group shot, but as far as I know Nicholas Sparks has never had black lovers, or an interracial romance, or a major character in his books who is black, or Hispanic, or Jewish, or Catholic, or biracial, or anything close to ethnic.

I confess I find this aspect of Nicholas Sparks' ouvre to be the most odious.  The fact that he always portrays the South (where his stories usually take place) as this wonder-world of model-like figures where no color is seen is grotesque and illogical.  It would be as if one were to write a book taking place in New Mexico and have no Hispanic or Native Americans anywhere to be seen.  It is disingenuous at best, downright bigoted at worst.  I don't believe Sparks himself holds racial animosity.  He just is either uninterested or unaware that black people fall in love too.



We're just pretty. 
Don't ask us to ACT!

Let us move away from the insipid nature of the plot (and one wonders whether any of Sparks' books are different one from another) and move on to other matters that damn Safe Haven to being one of if not the Worst Film of 2013.  Actually, I'm going to stay with the plot for just a moment. 

We have what is suppose to be a 'shocking' twist: that Tierney is really Katie's husband.  OK, if that is the case, then truth be told Safe Haven makes no sense.  If she didn't kill anyone (and the opening suggests as much), then why would anyone follow through on his APB if there was no murder?  Furthermore, if she can prove that she acted in self-defense (which is quite easy to do) why would she have to flee from Boston to Southport?  Why not divorce Tierney or seek shelter with the relatives who gave her money?

Why not just say "my husband is a drunken bully who beat me?"  Once in Southport, she could have just told Alex this and I'm sure the hunky widower would protect our fair maiden even if somehow (as we are told to believe) he can drive drunk without attracting attention from Boston, Massachusetts to Southport, North Caroline.  Furthermore, wouldn't he have been arrested for issuing a false police report and abusing his authority as a police officer?

We also have the second shocking twist to deal with.  Never have we been given any indication that Jo is Alex's late wife.  The idea of a ghost working and befriending Katie is already insulting to the audience, but providing no suggestion that Jo is the ghost of Alex's wife is just a cheat.  Of course, for that to work we have to assume that despite his passionate love for "Jo" he would keep no pictures of her anywhere.  Otherwise, Katie would have seen the similarity to her friend.

However, Dana Stevens and Gage Lansky's screenplay (as lousy as it is, though I can't help feel nothing could have improved the terrible book which they adapted) can't be blamed for the universally awful performances from all the cast.  Former underwear model Duhamel (who I think did a good job in Las Vegas) was so stiff and emotionalless, striking the same one-note over and over again.  However, a quick turn on the dance floor shows he is ready for Dancing With the Stars, where his co-star Hough has excelled.  However, as a dramatic actress, Hough is equal to Duhamel's non-acting (as if neither believes the situations they are being well-paid to perform).  A particularly embarrassing scene is where Alex confronts Katie about the "Person of Interest" flyer he finds at the police station (which no one else in town bothered to see).  It was never believable and they were so stiff and unconvincing with each other, almost as if they were still figuring out what the words actually meant. 

The children were horrid, Lyons was almost comical in his 'villainous' turn, and Smulders was convincing as a ghost because she acted as if she was dead.

If one is a fan of Nicholas Sparks' drivel, where beautiful (white) people in/from the South meet, fall in love, and overcome whatever obstacles a 'bad man' has for them while precious and precocious little children run around, then Safe Haven will work for you.  If however you have a functioning brain and aren't willing to suspend disbelief to where you are asked to accept idiotic nonsense as realistic or romantic, then you will find Safe Haven something to run from.  

DECISION: F       

The Lucky One: A Review

THE LUCKY ONE

Thinking on The Lucky One, the latest film adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, I can see that we have the requisite Sparks details: A.) a beautiful-looking, gentle man who is wounded soul (check), B.) a woman who has shut herself off emotionally until meeting A (check), C.) a child (check), D.) the evil love rival (check), E.) the wise elder who sees through A. & B.'s attempts at NOT falling in love (check), F.) chaste sex (check), G.) a bucolic Southern setting (check), H.) the idealized South with few to no black people (check), and I.) death hanging over our lovers.  The Lucky One to its credit tries to get its leads to act.  One of them can but doesn't show it.  The other can't and shows plenty of it.

Logan (Zac Efron) is on his third tour in Iraq.  In his final days there, he spots a picture of a beautiful woman.  By moving away, he avoids an explosion that kills his fellow soldiers.  It seems to Logan that this picture has kept him safe, and now, eight months after returning, still suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, he needs to find the woman, and thank her.

His search leads him from Colorado to Louisiana (the South, of course), where after some determination he is able to find the lady in the picture.  She is Beth Green (Taylor Schilling), who runs a home for animals.  In one of those quirks of Sparks, Beth thinks Logan is here about an ad for a roustabout-type, and Logan chickens out: he doesn't tell her his real reason for being there but does take the job.

In short order this quiet, dependable, hunky fellow becomes indispensible to both Beth and her wise mother Ellie (Blythe Danner), not to mention Beth's son Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart).  Now, Ben's father Keith (Jay R. Ferguson), scion of a powerful judge, don't take a shining to anyone getting near his ex-woman.  He thinks Ben playing the violin is not masculine enough, and constantly threatens to take Ben away from Beth if she so much as lusts after another man.

Our lovers will not be denied.  They begin their very chaste affair, and Logan soon starts getting close to Ben.  However, something has to keep our lovers apart: Beth, or rather Keith, discovers Beth's photo that she had given her brother Drake when he had gone off to Iraq.  Beth breaks from Logan, until we get a fortuitious twist: Logan recognizes Drake's picture that Ben had been using as a bookmark as a fellow Marine called "Aces", and he knows what happened to Drake (something the Greens have yet to learn).  As Logan rushes to tell Beth how her brother died, the big storm overwhelms the big storm.  As a mini-hurricane sweeps in a drunk and despondent Keith makes his threat, which causes Ben to run away, which causes Keith, Beth, and Logan to go after him, which causes Keith to risk and lose his life to rescue Ben.

Now with our lovers reconciled, Beth and Logan can start their great love affair, with Ben by their side.

No one can accuse Sparks or Will Fetters' adaptation of Sparks' novel of not keeping the saccharine levels to full capacity.  One CAN however, accuse them of rank stupidity.  The only way I could buy this last-minute twist (Aces=Drake) is if I accept that in the Green household, for all the time Logan must have spent there, did not have ANY pictures of Drake Green hanging or otherwise present.

I want people who love both the novel and film The Lucky One to focus on that (pun intended).  The entire plot hangs on a picture (Beth's) but I'm suppose to believe for all the talking and swooning she does over Logan NO ONE: not Beth, not Ben, not Ellie, EVER bothered to show Logan what Drake looked like.  IF they had done that, The Lucky One would have collapsed and ended rather quickly.  The mystery of both how Aces/Drake died and how Logan came across Beth's picture would have been solved and we wouldn't have had anything else to say. 

I simply don't buy that at the Green home there wouldn't have been some kind of memorial to Drake, which would have included his picture, which Logan could have recognized quickly.  The fact that the story asks us to take such an insane and insanely stupid leap of logic, though typical of any Sparks book, is really too much for me to accept without complaint.

If only that weren't the only thing that makes The Lucky One a tale of stupid people falling in love. Almost every stereotypical and cliched movie moment is found in The Lucky One, courtesy of director Scott Hicks.  I counted around five musical montages, where we get to see the beauty of Efron or Schilling while some song played.  The climatic moment is laughable: what ARE the odds that little Ben would happen to run away when there is a major storm coming?  I imagine if this was how the book was, it would have read as a piece of garbage.  At best, it would be lazy and cliched writing; at worst it is insulting.

Hicks should have concentrated on trying to get his leads to act.  I think Zac Efron has some abilities, but in The Lucky One he looked and behaved like a zombie.  For a story that depends on romance, he was so dead on screen, completely blank and emotionaless.  Schilling is a beautiful woman, but she appeared to match Efron's dead acting.  Few times have I seen two leads look so bored together, as if they were drugged.

The Lucky One, in its efforts to drown in romance, has moments of unintended laughter.  In one of their love scenes, Beth all but attacks Logan in passion while he's cleaning himself up.  While they were writhing around in ecstacsy one could only imagine that this was giving new meaning to the phrase "getting wet".   Ferguson's wild scenery-chewing as the villain du jour was almost as embarrasing as Schilling & Efron's sleepwalking.

I will concede that Alar Kivilo's cinematography is appropriately lush, bathing this imaginary Sparks South in appropriately romantic tones, and Mark Isham's score is equally lush (not good, but lush), but The Lucky One really in a bizarre way plays like it's a bad copy of a Nicholas Sparks novel, which are already bad in themselves.  Somehow, The Vow is a much better stab at a Sparks story without actually being connected to Nicholas Sparks.      

I can't blame The Lucky One for being a second-rate adaptation of a third-rate version of stories cranked out by a fourth-rate author.  That being the case, The Lucky One fulfills its perfunctory duty to give us stupid people falling in love.   I can only pray that Nicholas Sparks' luck will soon run out.

DECISION: C-

The Notebook: A Review

THE NOTEBOOK

I Don't Noah Much, But I Know Allie Love You...

In all my years of film-viewing, I have never prejudged any film, or made my mind up about a movie before seeing it with one exception. 

Somehow, The Notebook became a fixation of scorn with me.  I instantly dismissed it as a treacly love story where the "twist" was so obvious that I did wonder whether we were supposed to know it even before the thing started.  I became infamous in my circle of mocking The Notebook, always speaking its name with a high squeal, pursing my lips to say "The Notebook, THE NOTEBOOK", mimicking the gaggle of girls who thought it the Citizen Kane of love stories, this brilliant epic story of romance that spans time and death itself. 

For years I obstinately refused to watch The Notebook, and my view that it was trash hardened, especially when I considered that The Notebook spawned more insipid prose from Nicholas Sparks as well as more Sparks adaptations (Dear John, The Last Song, The Lucky One, Safe Haven). 

Eventually, a copy of The Notebook became available through the public library.  Now I was ready to judge the film on its own merits.

I find my instincts were absolutely right.

Most of The Notebook is flashback to the 1940's.  It's the summer, and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) is enjoying the carnival when in sweeps Noah Calhoun (Avant-garde actor Ryan Gosling).  He's a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, she's the daughter of privilege.

Obviously, in very short time Noah sweeps Allie off her feet, and despite the fact that they argue over nearly everything, they have a passion that overwhelms them.  Even though they have only one thing in common (I figure it's love, but given how these two behave one would think it was a fierce sexual attraction), Allie and Noah do make an effort to win her parents over.

Big Daddy John Hamilton (Frank Thorton) and Big Momma Anne (Joan Allen) tolerate what they think is a summer fling, but when Allie stayed out late one night with Noah, they have the police look for her.  His buddy Fin (Kevin Connolly) warns them, catching them just as they are about to give themselves over to physical passion (I was surprised they hadn't already). 

Allie and Noah fight, and they break up.  Both regret how they split, and Noah writes Allie every day for a year, but gets no response because Big Momma keeps the letters from her daughter.

Allie gets to college and Fin and Noah move to Atlanta, but Pearl Harbor gets in the way.  Noah and Fin enlist, Allie turns to nursing.  Fin dies, and Allie is courted by former patient Lon Hammond (James Marsden). 

He's rich, he's handsome, he's a Southerner, he's in love with Allie.  Obviously, he's all wrong for her. 

Noah drowns his sorrow by rebuilding the plantation he bought thanks with money from his dad Frank (Sam Shepard) and a part-time girlfriend Martha Shaw (Jamie Brown).  Allie quickly agrees to marry Lon, and Noah keeps repairing and rebuilding the plantation, claiming he wants to sell but never doing so.

Eventually, a newspaper article attracts Allie just as she's trying on her wedding dress.  Like a moth to a flame, she goes to Noah.  They talk, they fight, then she finally loses her virginity to him (and the sex must have been spectacular).  Still, she is torn between her passion for Noah and her love for Lon.  One can guess what the end is.

This whole story is written in a notebook, read to a woman slipping into dementia (Gena Rowlands) by an older man called Duke (James Garner).  In a debatable twist, we find that this woman, one Allie Hamilton, has been read her own story and that Duke (not in the best of health himself) is one guess.

The Notebook I think makes an effort to try to add a twist into this story primarily by having the older man called at first Duke, but it was obvious from the get-go that Duke and Noah were one and the same.  As a result, what one is waiting for is for Allie to see she's Allie. 

Without minimizing the serious issue of dementia the older Allie must truly be out of it if she didn't make the connection between herself and the Allie of the story.  In the middle of the story, we get a visit from Duke's children but the nurse tells her they are his children, not hers.  Whether this is a concession to her illness or an effort to try and keep the subterfuge I can only guess, but by this time if  you haven't figured it out you haven't been paying attention.

Instead, you've been distracted by the physical beauty of McAdams and avant-garde actor Gosling.  The Notebook is if nothing else a very lush picture, going for excessively beautiful and romantic imagery and settings. Robert Fraisse's cinematography is bathed in lush sunsets and geese or swans swimming in gentle swamps, and Aaron Zigman's score takes a stab at being soft, gentle and romantic.

Curiously, The Notebook (and perhaps Crazy, Stupid, Love) are the only concessions avant-garde actor Gosling has ever made to both his good looks and in showing a lighter side on screen.  Avant-garde actor Gosling appears drawn to darker fare (The Believer, Half Nelson, Blue Valentine, Drive, The Ides of March) and I've wondered from time to time if this is as atonement for being in both The New Mickey Mouse Club and Young Hercules, in the belief that only by playing dark characters will he be taken seriously. 

I know he's a competent actor, but I wasn't convinced he was Noah. Instead, avant-garde actor Gosling appeared a bit out of place in the romance, only coming alive when he's doing something dangerous such as bullying Allie into agreeing to a date by dangling high above the carnival on the Ferris wheel, or when channeling anger. 

McAdams is better suited to play at women wildly in love, given she's been taking these types of role in other films like The Time Traveler's Wife and The Vow.  For me, I thought she came off as a bit whiny and indecisive (although perhaps if a woman has to choose between avant-garde actor Ryan Gosling and James Marsden, she might have to think long and hard about it). 

Speaking of Marsden, I think he was here to play a Sparks stock character: the love rival who never adds anything close to a threat to our lovers, and he appeared a bit blank.  Connolly as the requisite best buddy didn't add much either except an almost peppy cheeriness to counterbalance Noah's somewhat more serious manner.

The best performance was from Allen, an underused actress in Hollywood.  She doesn't overplay the evil woman keeping our lovers apart but is given a true motivation for her actions (although a hinting of this would have made the scene where she kept the letters from Allie less villainous).  Nothing against Thornton, but director Nick Cassavetes should have told him to lose the mustache: I actually laughed when I first saw it.  It looked comical and silly to where I wondered if Thornton fought the temptation to twirl it. 

It looked as if it came from another time setting predating the interwar period; given how Sparks' world view allows for happy Negroes dancing with the poor whites but even in the Twentieth Century blacks don't play a prominent role in his stories despite taking place in the South, perhaps the old-fashioned looking mustache isn't so out of place. 

Lest I forget, Garner and Rowlands were on the whole good in portraying a couple who are slowly losing each other to illness and death (another Sparks hallmark).  My only question is how you get a dark-haired older man like Garner from a golden-haired boy like avant-garde actor Gosling. 

All of the flaws in The Notebook come from the source material, and while Jeremy Leven's screenplay (adapted by Jan Sardi) went out of its way to make the story romantic (what with the very fast courting by Noah of Allie and even faster acceptance of Lon by Allie) it still was far too long at a little over two hours. 

While it tried to bring a sense of love that is fading with I'll Be Seeing You as a theme, a better song would have been Do It Again.  After they consummated their love, the only thing I could hear in my mind was  "Do It Again/I may cry No, No/but Do It Again".

There were things I wondered about that perhaps a film adaptation could have done better (I thought if Noah were smart, he would have used a pseudonym when writing to Allie) and made Allie's conflict between her love for Lon and Noah more intense.

I know a lot of people think The Notebook is a true passionate love story.  I'm not averse to love stories: I confess I come close to tears at Casablanca and The Way We Were. My tolerance for sappy stories, however, is a low one. 

The Notebook is one of those films that is declared romantic because it has such things as death, two mismatched lovers, and the ecstasy of first sex.  Somehow, if they had been open with the 'twist' instead of trying for it I think The Notebook would have been a slightly better film.  However, as much as The Notebook is embraced, I find that these love notes are badly written. 

DECISION: D+

Personal Reflections on Nicholas Sparks

It's not in my heart to hate. I want to think the best of everyone. I go into a film wanting it to be a good film, and I judge it based on what it was going for. It is unfair to judge The Battle of Algiers to the same standard as Theater of Blood or 8 1/2 or Touching the Void or The Hangover or West Side Story or Aliens.

I think the same whenever I pick up a book: Vince Flynn will entertain me, David Sedaris will entertain me, James Patterson will entertain me, and Nicholas Sparks will entertain me.

However, given the film versions of Dear John and The Last Song, I'm beginning to hate Nicholas Sparks, not as a person but certainly as a writer. It just, I suppose, is par for the course that there are certain things that every Nicholas Sparks book (and subsequent film) will have.

It will be set in the South, usually in the summer, and almost always near bodies of water.
There will be a large plantation house full of wealthy people with one of them as a main character.
There will be a beautiful boy and a pretty girl who are being kept apart for some reason.
There will be lovers who will almost always be chaste, either in the literal sense or in a more figurative and vague manner where if they do eventually consummate their relationship, it will be near the end.
There will be a love rival subplot that goes nowhere.
Finally, THERE WILL BE DEATH.

It just seems that Sparks has a rather unhealthy and unnatural obsession with death, with killing off a character. I look at The Last Song and Dear John and note with some chagrin that in both stories the father is dead by the end. Cancer plays a major part in both films: the father in The Last Song, the first husband in Dear John, and I don't know if it's a coincidence but it does strike me as almost morbid how Sparks has a thing for bringing a touch of romance to terminal illness. Let us not forget that in the Citizen Kane of Sparks' books (The Notebook), the whole point revolves around Alzheimer's Disease.

Nothing like a destructive disease that kills your mind to spin the love story for our age.

Yes, cancer was the central plot point of Erich Segal's Love Story, but

1. I didn't care for that film


2. It wasn't as shameless as Sparks' ouvre


3. It came near the end and not out of nowhere.

To its credit, Love Story has given us one of the most memorable quotes in film

Love means never having to say you're sorry.

but, truth be told, I find that to be a false statement.

On the contrary, love means always having to say you're sorry.

I understand the sentiment of that line: that if we truly love someone, we will never do anything to deliberately hurt them (and thus, anything that will require forgiveness). However, I contend that one will inevitably do or say something that will hurt someone unintentionally. In fact, I could use Christian theology to back up my claim.

We love God and God loves us. God will never do anything to deliberately hurt us, but we as sinners will do something that will hurt God: we will sin. Therefore, even though we love God with all our hearts, we will still cause Him pain, therefore, we need to say we're sorry (if one is truly repentant). People will always hurt others, most of the time without meaning to, letting our anger get the better of us.

There are some things that merely saying sorry for will not work (physical assault, having an affair), but when we speak ill and ask for forgiveness, I would say it should be granted. Remember, anger does them no harm and you no good.

Yet I digress.

Sparks has not created anything truly original or unique in his novels. They sometimes seem to be the same story.  I actually think he has a template on his laptop and just alters a few things and presto: a new bestseller!

I thought of Dear John as The Notebook: Afghanistan, in that you had two soldiers separated from the true love of their lives only to return and find them with someone else.

It appears that all of Sparks' books wallow gleefully in their overbearing sentimentality and grandiose romance, but such loves I have found cannot be real when the characters are so shamelessly interchangeable.

As I stated earlier, you have the beautiful (and I should add, truly noble) boy: in The Notebook, Dear John, and The Last Song portrayed respectively by Avant-garde actor Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum, and Liam Hemsworth, and the pretty (and I should add, gentle) girl: Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, and Miley Cyrus. Almost always one of them will be rich (that would be McAdams, Seyfried, and Hemsworth) and the other will be poor (Avant-garde actor Gosling, Tatum, and Cyrus). Rich person falls for poor person; how original.

How somehow with such a lack of originality as Nicholas Sparks can gain such popularity may be a Sign of The End of Western Civilization.

I believe that Sparks has a strong following in the Christian community, which makes me worry that people of faith are willing to settle for trite dialogue, no-dimensional characters, and weak/repetitive plots in order to not find anything offensive. To my fellow believers, don't let the relative chastity of the stories dull your senses.

Finally, I want to tackle a curiosity within Sparks' books and films. I confess to having seen only two adaptations of his works and never read any of them, but I find it rather curious that for films set solidly in the South I never see any African-Americans. The world Sparks and his characters inhabits seems to be WASP Heaven, full of rich white people, poor white people, but always beautiful looking white people.

I am absolutely positive and on record as not, repeat, NOT believing there is any racial animus in Nicholas Sparks himself. However, one should take him to task for making his stories rather empty of those who do not look like him. Even Agatha Christie had lesbian characters (although it is suggested rather than openly stated).

That seems almost certain: that Nicholas Sparks will never have a love story where one or both leads will be either black or of the same gender. I'm equal opportunity on this: I would have liked someone like E. Lynn Harris to try his hand at stories that went outside his race/sexuality. Perhaps that, today, is far too much to ask, I don't know. Still, I might take a second look at a Sparks book if the setting were perhaps Maine or Ottawa with the lovers named Habib or Guadalupe.

For my part, I simply don't understand why his books are popular or successful. They seem to be clichéd stories told over and over again. I don't think Nicholas Sparks can write. He seems like a nice guy. However, given his stories sound the same, I don't see him having longevity. I know one is suppose to write about what one knows, but he seems to be taking it to an extreme.

The Last Song: A Review

THE LAST SONG

Ah, l'amour, that magnificent, overpowering emotion that makes one abandon all rational thought and sweeps you up in fantasy.

No one knows how least to capture love than Nicholas Sparks, if I go by the film adaptations of his books. We've already been treated to Dear John, and now we have The Last Song. In a curious turn of events, Sparks had a film version of The Last Song while the novel was still in the Best Seller List.

I find it a curious coincidence, or a punishment from a most wrathful deity.

Ronnie (Miley Cyrus) and her younger brother Jonah (Bobby Coleman) are sent to Georgia for the summer to spend time with their father Steve (Greg Kinnear) by their mother Kim (Kelly Preston). Ronnie is your typical teenager: moody, angry, sullen, edgy. You can tell by her scowl and black wardrobe in this world of summer sunshine.

Even though she is a talented pianist, even getting accepted to Julliard, she has steadfastly refused to play ever since her parents divorced. In the course of her first night at her father's beachfront property, she meets Blaze, real name Galadriel (Carly Chaikin), fellow goth girl, Blaze's boyfriend Marcus (Nick Lashaway) an obviously sleazy bad boy, and Will (Liam Hemsworth) the typical golden boy, with the golden curls and six-pack abs.

Ronnie has a lot of hostility towards the world, and especially her father, but she has a soft side. Ronnie discovers a nest of turtles she is determined to save from raccoons, and to her surprise, Will comes from the local aquarium to help her.

Soon, a romance blossoms between Ronnie and Will, but there are difficulties. Will's family, whom we discover is a wealthy and influential one, believes Ronnie is all wrong for him. Will himself holds knowledge of a secret that directly involves Steve (a secret that is harming Steve's soul and wrecking his reputation). Steve himself has a secret: he is dying. Ronnie eventually comes to acknowledge her talent, her love for her father, and her love for the Golden Boy Will.

The Last Song should be called Variations on A Theme by Sparks, because we are entering familiar territory. The story isn't original (given the author, it should be no surprise), and the acting varies from strong to weak.

If one wants to look for the positive, Kinnear has left the memories of his hosting duties on Talk Soup far, far behind. He is always understated in The Last Song, and, other than having the unfortunate name of Steve Miller (was Sparks trying to suggest that the character was a joker, was a smoker, was a midnight toker?) Kinnear projects a gentleness and sadness to Steve. He has the best scenes with Coleman's Jonah: those father-son bonding moments are quite gentle and almost touching, although they are a bit on the heavy side.

Coleman for his part was on the whole far more interesting a character, but he was terribly chipper a great deal of the time, almost to the point of annoyance. Still, he was required to be the requisite Cute Kid, and he managed to do that.

Chaikin and Lashaway as demented lovers Blaze and Marcus really had nothing to do with the overall plot of The Last Song, and throughout the movie I wondered why they were there...other than to provide Ronnie with a 'frienemy' and Will with a chance to fight. They really had no business being there because their scenes were brief and before you know it they leave almost as soon as they came in.

Well, now you have our leads, and while they may be or have been romantically paired off-screen, they don't have any real connection on-screen.

Cyrus doesn't have the experience to ground The Last Song in its pathos, and while granted the situations and dialogue from Jeff Van Wie and Sparks himself don't do her any favors, with such lines as:

It's what I do, Mom. I push people away.

as directed by Julie Anne Robinson it's Ronnie who appears dead most of the time. Cyrus believes that pouting is a sign of emotional range, and she does quite a bit of pouting in the film. She even manages to pout at her own father's funeral. This does not bode well for her future as a dramatic actress as opposed to the light fare of Hannah Montana.

Hemsworth appears to think, or perhaps was told, that his main purpose was to look beautiful and stare blankly. Even in moments that call for a deep dramatic reaction, such as when he tells Ronnie about the tragedies within his family, Hemsworth can't do it.

I might put him on that list of Emotionless Actors: performers who while looking beautiful (and given the montage of his beach volleyball tournament, Robinson and Company didn't waste a chance to show off his body) cannot project any true emotion or make us believe the characters are real people and not just faces/bodies.

Wie and Sparks should also be taken to task for throwing an endless number of clichés at The Last Song. It's bad enough the whole plot of the film is one gigantic cliché (the troubled talent finds love and forgiveness) but everything within it is almost insulting to a thinking audience. Isn't it the way of the world that:

1. the rich parents won't approve of the girl from the wrong side of the tracks
2. the guy the main character least expects is the one who will be perfect for her
3. the girl will always overhear a shocking secret just as it's revealed
4. the dying person will end his life hearing beautiful music created for him
5. the dying man will knock over a glass of liquid to let everyone know he's dead
6. a bright light will shine through a stained-glass window (and that window will be of The Resurrection)
7. the love of her life will arrive just in time to hear the bereaved's touching tribute?

It all is thrown in there with gusto but one can't help think it's all just way too much to tolerate.

There are good things within The Last Song. Kinnear and a completely wasted Preston handle their roles with a deft touch, and the actual song itself isn't bad. However, Hemsworth and Cyrus don't have the experience, or a good script, or strong directing, to have us believe they are lovers (and like in any Sparks book, the most chaste of lovers).

It's a lousy story and so hopeless out of tune.

I include some Personal Reflections on The Last Song author Nicholas Sparks.

DECISION: D+

Dear John (2010): A Review

DEAR JOHN

I'll Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter...

I cannot tell a lie: I think Nicholas Sparks' books are exactly alike. Now, now, I confess I haven't read any of them, but given Message In A Bottle, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe, and of course, The Notebook, they all seem like the same story told over and over and once more: man and woman (one or both with a troubled past) meets man/woman, they fall in love, and something keeps them apart.

There appears to be a certain built-in sappiness to his tomes, a pseudo-sweet worldview that frankly I think is almost destructive. This is how I see both his novels and the films based on them, so I was quite alarmed at Dear John, or at least the concept of it. I found that my fears were not only grounded, but fully materialized.

John Tyree (Channing Tatum) is a soldier on a two-week leave in his hometown. While surfing, he sees the beautiful Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried), whose purse falls into the ocean in what is generally called a plot device. He rescues it, she invites him to a cookout where he meets the unnecessary love rival, Randy (Scott Porter) and her seemingly platonic best friend Tim (Henry Thomas), who has the requisite adorable but autistic son Alan (Braeden Reed). Wouldn't you know it, but in those two magical weeks John & Savannah fall passionately, madly, and most importantly in a Sparks book/film, chastely in love. In that short time John introduces Savannah to his father (Richard Jenkins), who has a mania for coin collecting.

Eventually, their time together must end: he back to Germany, she back to school. However, they promise to keep in touch via love letters. As they continue their courtship, wouldn't you know it: that pesky September 11, 2001 gets in the way. He goes off to war, but how fickle is woman...John actually gets a Dear John letter, breaking his heart.

Six years later, he still hasn't recovered from the Greatest Love of All, but his father's stroke along with his own actual war wounds sends him back to the States, where they reunite and we discover why she broke his heart, and given it's from Nicholas Sparks, her reason for doing so is also pure.

If there seems to be a note of sarcasm as I describe Dear John, it's merely because the film begs me to hate it. Their love was fast, yet their love is pure. When Jamie Linden writes you a scene where your two leads kiss for the first time (or at least first time on screen) in the rain, you can hear the clichés coming straight from the keyboard.

As if this weren't already a bit much to take, we have the scene where they finally consummate their love. It was remarkably tasteful, but it made the lovemaking of the Greatest Love of All Time seem, well, chaste. Now, one doesn't need a wild orgy, but it was filmed so cinematically that it became unreal: too artsy for such a low-brow project. The obvious question: if they are so much in love, why don't they get married when he comes back on leave a la the Judy Garland/Robert Walker romance The Clock, isn't asked because it would ruin the beauty of this pseudo-impossible and pure love.

I asked myself, why don't they just married? I answered myself, if they did, we'd have no movie. They must be kept apart, confound it, at all costs, even at the cost of logic.

There were a total of nine to ten voice-overs of John and Savannah reading each other's letters, starting from the beginning of the film and continuing to the end of the film. Are there any other clichés Linden and director Lasse Halstrom want to hit us with?
How about the adorable yet special child? Check. T
he troubled father? Check.
The dying love? Check and check.

Dear John is if anything, a love letter to love letters, a throwback to a more gentle time when lovers separated by war wrote to each other with pen and paper. While I long for those days to return, even I recognize most people would write electronically. The fact that they didn't makes me think that Sparks and Company think a story that would be better suited for World War II would work in the Afghan/Iraq Campaigns.

Here's where Dear John is completely disingenuous: in one of her five voice-overs, Savannah mentions e-mail to John as a way of communicating, but they never use it. The reason is simple: John's military exercises provide him no access to the Internet. Granted, I can go along with that for a bit, but when you are in Afghanistan, you think, if jihadists have access to the Web, surely the American troops have it too.

However, we can't have long flowing prose about how "I'll be looking at the moon/but I'll be seeing you" in e-mail. (For the record they didn't actually quote from I'll Be Seeing You, but they might as well have. In a strange twist of fate, this song was played in The Notebook. Curious how two of Sparks' books seem to draw from the same well of inspiration. Also, the Mel Tormé version is far better than the Billie Holliday version).

In fact, I wondered whether I was watching The Notebook: Afghanistan. It's not too much of a stretch: a man who is poor is separated from the truest love of all time by war, only to return and find her unavailable.

No one was helped by their individual performances. Tatum is in the running for being the least expressive person with the dubious title of actor working today. Granted, he has a nice voice (which is great for the voice-overs), but when he's on the screen I don't think he changed his facial expression once. I'll give him an A for Effort: he did try when he begs Savannah's forgiveness, but still he couldn't get a sense that this was John Tyree. I think Tatum is hampered by the fact that his background is that of a stripper-turned-model with basically on-the-job training as an actor. This is the second film I've seen of his where he's a soldier (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the other), and I think for a role that requires total stoicism he's set. However, for a romantic film, his lack of expression is deadly.

Seyfried is all doe-eyed as Savannah, and at times I get the sense that she is trying to wring a performance out of the lousy material, but while Meryl Streep could do it (and that's a big if), Seyfriend can't quite get there. Faring worse is Jenkins, who comes off as doing a Rain Man audition. The scene where he demands to be taken back to his house after John & Savannah got him to almost come to Savannah's family mansion (a Southern home so vast I half-expected Mammy and Prissy to come charging in and take Miss Savannah for her nap) was especially painful.

Porter's Randy character (no pun intended) was suppose to be this rival for Savannah's affection, but that didn't last. Thomas was pretty blank as her seemingly-platonic friend, as if he was trying his best Channing Tatum impersonation. Finally, while I'm loath to pick on an autistic child, Reed's appearance as Tim's son really added nothing to the overall story except a reason for The Greatest Love of All Time to have a stumbling block.

Now, normally I don't comment on alternate endings but instead judge on what is on the screen. However, I understand there is controversy because the official ending is different than the novel's ending, which is captured in the alternate ending. Having seen both, they should have had the alternate ending. That had a better sense of poignancy than the requisite happy ending, one that did in a sense cost someone his life.

Dear John is one of those films that is totally and absolutely sappy, but basically coming from another time. There was no acting by anyone, a story that we end up not caring about, and is completely indistinguishable from any other film that has emerged from the oeuvre of Nicholas Sparks.

In the end, is there anything in Dear John worth your time? Well, for 90% of women and 10% of men, there is one...

I also have some Personal Reflections on Dear John author Nicholas Sparks.

DECISION: F