You know Valentine’s Day is upon us, as Nights in Rodanthe is the second film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel to hit the market in the last three weeks. First was 2004’s The Notebook, packaged as a limited edition gift set in both DVD and Blu-ray versions. Now we have Nights in Rodanthe, released in 2008 and available on DVD and Blu-ray on February 10, 2009. Given the chemistry they had in 2002’s Unfaithful, it’s not surprising that Warner Brothers decided to pair Diane Lane and Richard Gere up for the teary, romantic drama, Nights in Rodanthe. Once again, the actors work well together and do as much as they can with the material their given. However, this time the screenplay by Ann Peacock and John Romano, doesn’t really showcase either actors abilities.
Lane plays Adrienne Willis, a divorced mother of a teenage daughter and a ten-year-old son. She is struggling with the fact that her ex-husband Jack (Christopher Meloni) wants to get back together, after he cheated on her. She has devoted her life to her husband and children and now feels betrayed by his unfaithfulness. To make matters worse, her daughter hates her for not letting her father return home and her son is just confused by the whole thing.
Richard Gere plays Dr. Paul Flanner. While he is a successful surgeon, his personal life is a complete mess. Divorced, his career has always come first in his life. He’s dealing with even bigger problems than Adrienne– one of his female patients accidentally died in a surgery and he is now being sued by the woman’s husband (Scott Glenn) and his grown son (an uncredited James Franco) also a doctor, hates him.
Wouldn’t you know it, both Adrienne and Paul end up at the same isolated inn together in Rodanthe, a small town on the North Carolina coast. She has volunteered to take care of the place for a friend (Viola Davis) and it just so happens that Paul is the only guest. (I bet you didn’t see that coming!) Terribly bad weather forces Adrienne and Paul to stay inside together. It’s not too long before they discover they have a lot of the same family problems, hopes and dreams. Shortly thereafter, they find themselves in each other’s arms. That’s pretty much it, except for the ending, which I’ll get to in a minute. Nights in Rodanthe is really vintage Nicholas Sparks; we can see what’s coming long before it happens but fans of these dramas will still want their hankies at hand. In true Sparks fashion, everything is as melodramatic as possible; there’s a hurricane, which is powerful enough to blow the inn down but of course it doesn’t. From there, the story gets, romantic, passionate and then downright maudlin.
The only thing I took real issue with is the ending. It’s so preposterous that the story loses whatever credibility it had left. The chances of the events described actually happening are finite. It is clear the author intended it to be a manipulative plot device to really mess with people’s heads. That seems cheap and unnecessary.
Up until the ending, Nights in Rodanthe is an average romance film that should satisfy the legions of Nicholas Sparks fans out there.
Warners offer the film in two screen formats, standard full-screen and widescreen. The full-screen is primarily a pan-and-scan affair, although it does exhibit a little more image at the top and bottom of the screen than the widescreen does. The widescreen displays the film’s original 2.40:1 ratio and provides about 40% more information left and right. The image is most often intentionally soft and pale, so the movie is not exactly a visual delight. Some bright outdoor shots show us how well the picture can be under the right conditions, which is good by SD standards. Primarily, however, the director focuses on indoor locations and relatively dim lighting.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track doesn’t have a whole lot to do. There is a storm about halfway through the movie where rain, wind, and thunder roar all around us, the deep bass bursts forth with authority, and a few dynamic jolts practically knock the walls of one’s listening room down. Mainly, though, it reproduces voices nicely, which is what the film is all about.
If you want any extras, you’ll have to get the Blu-ray edition. This DVD contains almost nothing in the way of bonus materials. the two screen formats I mentioned; some trailers and promos at start-up only; access to a digital copy of the film, Windows Media-compatible only, not compatible with Apple Macintosh and iPod devices; English, French, Spanish spoken languages; French and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.
