Review: ‘Nights in Rodanthe’

Zac:

This adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel succeeds at being an entertaining and engaging romance film that stays away from sap and clichà ©s of the genre, but still kind of prescribes to the formula.

Adrienne (Diane Lane) is a separated mother with two kids who is heading to Rodanthe for a weekend to cover running a bed and breakfast of her best friend.   Before she leaves her husband says she wants her back and sends her off for the weekend to her thoughts and ideas running through her head.   Paul (Richard Gere) is Adrienne’s only guest for the weekend and his nerves and tensions are spinning almost as powerful as the rumored hurricane blowing into the town of Rodanthe.   The two come to the inn to clear their thoughts and mull there future paths and the two begin to bond over dinners and stories as they wait out the on coming hurricane.

I will not share more, as the unfolding relationship is the whole point of the film and I will not spoil that for those still interested.   What you should know is that for 2/3 of the film it works quite well actually.   Like I mentioned in my opening blurb, the film steers from sap and clichà © and feels fairly honest and natural between the two.   Sure there are a couple of convenient circumstances but it never feels over contrived or absurd.

Richard Gere does a great job as Paul and is very convincing with his swelling emotions.   He is a lost man, with no idea where he is going, and he desperately needs something to right his ship.   He is charming and very believable and does a fantastic job here.   Diane Lane on the other hand was a bit lacking.   When working with Gere she gets the job done, but alone or working with the children in the film, she just doesn’t come off as believable and almost laughable at a couple moments.   The director really should have done something more to get more out of her, but oh well to late for that now.   James Franco and Christopher Meloni both turn in quick but solid turns with Viola Davis providing a bit of a stereotypical but funny turn as Adrienne’s best friend.

Also to note, is the excellent cinematography throughout the picture.   I will say early on they hold on a bit to long for a few, but as it goes on there is some great blue screen work on display as well as one of the most beautiful shots I have seen in a movie this year on a darkly lit dock where the two share a moment.

The final 1/3 of the film falls a bit into that clichà © and sap that the movie did such a good job of avoiding, while also abandoning one of the lessons of the film for a short while, but it doesn’t ruin an otherwise solid romantic effort put up on screen.

In the end, Nights in Rodanthe, is a good romance picture that is held back by its female lead and its inability to get too original and ultimately falling into clichà © by the end.   But the trip to get there is surprisingly solid and Gere does a great job in the film, as he usually does.   If your a fan of romance, you should probably find this one to be a winner, but not necessarily a masterpiece, but that’s OK because it does engage and invest you in the characters and story.

[rating:3/5]

Melissa:

I think I just threw up something horrible… and it’s called Nights in Rodanthe! This is possibly the worst movie that I have seen in some time!

Diane Lane plays Adrienne Willis, a confused woman who is watching her friends Inn in Rodanthe. While Adrienne tries to sort out her feelings for her adulterous husband, she meets Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere). Dr. Flanner is in Rodanthe to speak to the husband of a patient who died during an operation, and he just so happens to be the only guest at the Inn.

I bet you won’t guess what happens next… Yep! They fall in love! But not before you have to listen to both of them complain about how horrible their lives are. Actually, that is the majority of the movie! There is no real character development other than Adrienne talking about her kids and her cheating husband, or Dr. Flanner feeling sorry for himself because he put his career in front of his now ex wife and son. They fight on day two of meeting, and it’s hard to really believe that all of this happened in four days.

The romance between the two is almost uncomfortable to watch at some points! When they get to the formulated “romance movie” sex scene, I cringed! It was really awkward! There was absolutely nothing appealing or arousing about it. The only thing that I can compare it to is that disturbing feeling you get when a sex scene comes on and you are sitting next to your mother. Thank goodness for me that my mom didn’t end up coming with me like she was suppose to!

I almost got up and walked out the theater at several points! The soundtrack is also horrible! I don’t know who chose the country song that played about five minutes into the film, but they should be fired!

I was really hoping for something magical with Diane Lane and Richard Gere. They were both incredible in Unfaithful. This one really lacked in just about every department. It was predictable, boring, and all around lame!

Save your 97 minutes and your $7.00’s. If you want to hear people complain for that long just take that money and go buy a drink at your local bar!

[rating:1/5]

Jeremy:

‘Nights in Rodanthe’ is one of those movies that just coasts on its sentimentality.   It is pure Hollywood schmaltz that never aspires to be anything more.   Being based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, you pretty much know where the story is going from the word “go”, and it hits every overdone plot point along the way to its overly cliched ending.   Strangers meet, they fall in love, conflict comes between them, yada-yada-yada.

The film is directed by Peter Sollett, and his direction just gets in the way of any interest you might derive from the story.   There is fancy camera work, crane shots up to here, and quick cuts about every .5 seconds.   This is something I wish directors and editors would learn.   If you are cutting away from something or to something else, it has to have a reason.   The cut should have some kind of purpose.   Simply cutting away from something and then back to it for no apparent reason just gets distracting.

There are moments in ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ that feel like they are being paced to an episode of ’24’, but instead of Kiefer Sutherland in a car chase, it’s Diane Lane making dinner.   The only time the pacing and over-editing actually work in this film is the short segment involving a hurrican.   It’s fine, lots of tension and atmosphere, but it’s like the story sped itself up to match speed with the direction, not the other way around.

Richard Gere and Diane Lane have decent chemistry.   This is really important when 80% of the film is just the two of them on screen.   You do, actually, want to see these two get together.   It’s inevitable, and it take forever.   This movie is 97 minutes long, and something that short should never drag.   ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ drags throughout.   I wouldn’t say it is ever boring, but it threatens the prospect on numerous occasions.

The only scene in the film that is truly great is a short monologue by Scott Glenn.   Gere plays a surgeon who lost a female patient on the operating table.   Glenn plays the woman’s husband, and the whole film is built up around this confrontation between the two actors.   It probably should have been longer, and those quick cuts didn’t help any, but Glenn is a great actor.   He makes the scene greater than it probably would have been in another actor’s hands.

You know precisely where the story is going, but I didn’t feel the film truly lost its way until the climax.   I won’t give away spoilers, but those final 20 minutes are just grueling to sit through.   Just when you think they’ve piled on every Hollywood cliche to be piled on, they throw one more in.   All I have to say is I prayed the horses wouldn’t come up again, I prayed that a small bit of dialogue wouldn’t come back to haunt the story, and it did.   It’s unnecessary, and its overt sweetness ruins the possibility for it to feel genuinely heartbreaking.

There are other moments in this final sequence that could have been done better, and they even tease that they are going to be done better.   A letter is read by a character, and there is no voice-over to tell us, the audience, what the letter says.   We all know the basic idea of what’s in the letter, so there’s no reason to have every detail spelled out.   It’s a really good scene, but it, too, is ruined in the next scene when that superfluous voice-over kicks in and tells us exactly what was just read.   It’s like Sollett wanted you to think he knew something about subtlety, and then pulled the rug out from under you.

That word, “subtle”, goes a long way in movies.   Romance films are the ones that seem to benefit the most from subtlety.   There’s nothing more annoying than an overblown, paint-by-numbers love story.   Unfortunately, ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ becomes just that.   If you’re not a lover of chick flicks, this is one that you will definitely want to miss.

[rating:2/5]

Quinn:

I wanted to see this movie from the first trailer I saw. From the short television commercials to the more lengthy and yet more detailed movie preview it demonstrated a passionate connection between Adrienne (Diane Lane) and Paul (Richard Gere).

I did not read the novel by Nicholas Sparks so I did not exactly what was going to happen, though I had an excellent idea of the story line from the detailed trailers.   Romantic movies and “chick flicks† like this rarely have a suspense aspect and the audience has a general idea of every move before it happens and that is ok because that is not why people see movies like this. People that enjoy this type of movie take the outline of the movie that is portrayed in the previews and yearn to fill in the intense details while watching the movie.

Movies like this are made for viewers to feel the passion and emotion between the leading man and woman.   Diane Lane and Richard Gere had excellent chemistry throughout. I felt their hurt, pain and confusion all the while feeling the strong connection of love and hope.

I would recommend this movie to people that are looking for a good love story.   This would be a good film to go to with your girlfriends or your sensitive significant other.   If you are a sentimental sap when it comes to love stories it would be a great idea to bring tissue.

[rating:4/5]