MOVIE REVIEW - Safe Haven

Nicholas Sparks romance novel, Safe Haven is new this week, and I hope you have a big stack of pancakes for the amount of sappy syrup they are serving up.

This predictable Sparks story and movie, stars the lovely Julianne Hough, and the equally beautiful Josh Duhamel.  And there lies some of the problem from a movie stand point, but more on that in a minute.  It's another woman in distress movie, where she meets a tortured man, and somehow they will work it all out so they can be together.  Now that we are way into the Sparks string of the same movie, it's clear that the only challenge is to find new faces that play the same characters.  These are now firmly established as romance novels come to life and not actually real movies.

Harsh sounding I know, but true.   As where these movies are only talked about in the same light as other Sparks movies, and not other movies.   James Bond flicks have the same syndrome.  Difference is, those are not the same story over and over again.  Oh yeah, and they are good.

This is the story of Katie (Hough).  She flees a terribly abusive marriage in the middle of the night and jumps a bus to the North Carolina Coast.   Her husband is a drunken Boston police detective who is out of his mind, and sets out to find Katie using horribly unprofessional methods to to so.   Katie meets Alex (Duhamel).  He is a general store owner in the town Katie ends up in.  His wife died of cancer a few years ago, and he is a single father of two amazingly beautiful children.  A boy and a girl, about 10 and 6.  They of course, go through the same courting scenes used in every Sparks film. Then they fall in love. 

But will Katie's husband find her?   And will he do them harm?   Will Katie tell Alex the truth about who she really is?  And is she really Katie?  Burning questions I know, but that's where we are.  Will it work out?  I don't know about you, but I have a guess.

OK, enough sarcasm, this is the same movie all over again, from...you take your pick, any Sparks movie.  Same basic plot, same area of the country and same premise all the way around, with the same characters.  There is nothing wrong with Hough here.  This is not challenging stuff to do.   She is cute, wieghs 100 pounds, and wears incredibly short shorts all movie long. Certainly likable on screen, but no different than she was on Dancing With The Stars.  Dumamel is amazingly handsome, and somewhat charming, and there is the obligatory no shirt scene or two.  All he really has to do is act smitten all movie and he does it.  It's real romance novel stuff.  Part of the charm for teenagers I know.   But not really good, or enduring movie making.

Seriously, who looks like these two anyway?  And that's part of the problem.  There is no real level of believability here at all.  And I get it too.  It's supposed to be a fantasy, a romance novel.  And that's my point.  This is not a movie, it's a book come to the screen as an escape, a fantasy.  But it's the same fantasy that's been had a dozen times before, and that's boring.  How about a new setting, how about some new characters, and maybe a different premise, and a real story and not some plot you pour into the "plot mold" and spit out the same old thing.  At least the Sparks book  The Notebook from years ago dared to be different in many ways and was.  And think about it, that's the only one that everyone talks about years later.

Oh yeah, with these movies it's not about being good.  It's not about making a real movie, it's about what may be the monetary gain only? Starting to look that way.   Or maybe continuing to look that way. How about something new next time?  Just to humor us.

Safe Haven.   New faces.  Same thing  -  again.