Is this bottle half full or half empty?
Message In A Bottle A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 By Michael Redman
** (Out of ****)
Shutting down after a personal tragedy is not an uncommon occurrence. Our lives are on automatic. We sleepwalk through the day with emotions flatlined.
Some people work through grief and eventually move on. Others cling to the catastrophe and continue the rest of their days with only memories. Their present is the past: a comfortable but lonely place to live.
Garret Blake (Kevin Costner) has mourned the death of his wife Catherine for two years and can't get beyond his guilt of not being the perfect husband. He's given up on his dreams and writes messages to Catherine, rolled up in bottles and tossed into the sea.
On a run along the beach, recently divorced Theresa Osborne (Robin Wright Penn) finds one of his bottles. The words are so poetic and heart-felt that she has to find the author.
As you might expect, when she does locate him in North Carolina's Outer Banks, she is instantly captivated and his feelings begin to awaken. (In real life the odds of it being Kevin Costner are just about as great as an anonymous emailer turning out to be Meg Ryan.)
The film is infuriatingly uneven. The injured souls' romance is believable and touching. Their hesitancy in getting involved is poignant. But just when the story grabs you, it shifts gears.
Theresa's boss and co-workers at the "Chicago Tribune" are dull yet eat up screen time. Garret's fight with his former in-laws doesn't contribute much. It feels like padding for an already overly-long film.
One of the biggest sins is a far-too-common plot device. When Theresa first encounters the man of her dreams, she doesn't tell him the true story of why they meet. After they become involved, it's too late. She's waiting for the right moment to confess and, of course, it never comes.
The audience knows that he's going to find out, get angry and leave her. Unfortunately the film takes its sweet time getting there and most of the intervening scenes are lost as viewers anticipate the inevitable.
This film is designed to appeal primarily to women. The bitter-sweet romance is a tear-jerker with a red sun shimmering in the background against an orange sunset, sailing ships on the high seas and lovers under a starry sky as strings swell on the soundtrack. They spend their first few nights in bed just holding each other. I have it on good authority that women like this kind of stuff.
Oddly enough for one of my particular gender, I usually enjoy "women's films." However this one has an inexcusable flaw. The ending, out of left field, is cinematic manipulation at its worst. The filmmakers take a convenient easy way out just to pull at the heartstrings.
Costner is one of my guilty pleasures, but his character here mostly just mopes. Penn is difficult to get a grasp on. She plays a strong enticingly beautiful woman but her habit of leaving sentences unfinished and filling in with giggles is less than endearing.
Paul Newman as Dodge, Garret's crusty dad, is a treat. The old codger could be Hank Stamper, his role years ago in "Sometimes A Great Notion", slightly more mellow and relocated to another coast. Newman and Costner work well as father and son. Sometimes you'll wish that the movie were about _their_ relationship.
(Michael Redman has written this column for well over 23 years and as you are reading this, is probably still sleeping off the Wild Raccoons Party Mardi. Email wake-up calls to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 2/17/99 "Bloomington Indpendent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com.] -- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/
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