Safe Haven : Movie Review


It's pointless criticizing a Nicholas Sparks movie for being a Nicholas Sparks movie. Sparks, like Barbara Cartland before him, delivers exactly what his fans want: romance between two attractive people. He tugs at heartstrings, acts like an onion on tear ducts, and provide the dose of sappy fantasy that allows his readers to escape into a world that's about as real as Middle Earth. This kind of thing inevitably works better in writing than in movies. Reading a Sparks novel allows one's imagination to enter the equation. Watching one of his stories adapted on screen has exactly the opposite effect: it neuters the imagination. This is soap opera, pure and simple. It's trash - entertaining and escapist, perhaps - but trash nonetheless. Overcoming the contrived plot points and painfully obvious "twists" makes it a difficult task to concentrate on the basic, critical character interaction.

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Author : James Berardinelli