I will give it to Nicholas Sparks. He sure as hell knows who his audience is when he writes his romantic novels. He has them eating out of the palm of his hand and the same can be said about Hollywood when they turn them in to movies. The Notebook did wonders when it was written and became a huge hit as a movie. Since then, the rest of them based on Sparks’ novels have been repetitive, watered-down, cheesy nonsense. It is all safe, generic-melodrama at its finest. And of course, Safe Haven is no exception.
Lets go over the story and I apologize if it sounds very familiar to other Sparks’ storylines. Katie (Julianne Hough) hops on a bus in the pouring rain in order to escape her abusive husband who just happens to be a cop as well. She ends up in a small North Carolina town where she does not trust anyone, especially Alex (Josh Duhamel) since he is a guy and all. He is a widow who is left with the task of raising his two kids while running a general store. Once Katie starts becoming more open with people and actually begins to consider this quiet place her home, her and Alex begin a romance that is almost too good to be true.
Hold on! There’s more!
Remember that bastard of a husband who Katie ran away from? Well after relentless investigating, he finds her and is not willing to give her up so easy.
Safe Haven is the same old song and dance that we have come to expect from Mr. Sparks. The story is abundantly conventional in every way imaginable and honestly, the whole thing is quite ridiculous. The best part is the twist at the end. Not only is it completely unnecessary, it’s just flat-out crazy. But what hurts the most is having good directors do these movies. Director Lasse Hallstrom, who has directed films such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, has directed two of Sparks movies! Dear John and now this one and it’s simply mind-boggling at this point why he chooses to be involved in messes like this. There is such a lack of emotion and logic in these types of movies and to see Hallstrom’s name attached to it is disappointing to say the least.
We all know the one requirement for every Sparks novel-turned-movie is it must have really attractive people in it, which I get. You have Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and Duhamel and Hough aren’t too bad themselves. Actually, their acting/chemistry isn’t terrible by any means. It’s the one thing that could make you less miserable while watching it. However, in order for Safe Haven to be half-way enjoyable, you would have to ignore the rest of it. Almost the entire thing. It is a story, actually almost a fantasy, that contains not one ounce of honesty in its characters or plot. It’s a fatal flaw that runs through most of Sparks’ movies.
This “love story” comes out on Valentine’s Day, which is very convenient. At the same time, it is smart because Safe Haven will make a ton of money because of that well-orchestrated decision made by Relativity Media. And even with the movie going out of its way to dumb everything down and the story practically being the same as all the others before it, women will still go and they will love every minute of it. And some of those same women will drag their boyfriends/husbands to it and those are the poor souls I feel sorry for the most.
“Nature Boy” Brandon Vick is the resident film critic of the SoBros Network, and star of Brandon’s Box Office In Your Mouth. Follow him on Twitter@SirBrandonV and be sure to search #VicksFlicks for all of his latest movie reviews.
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