Starting off with a promising first act with lightly interesting and developed characters, rich in personality and with hints of chemistry between the two love interests, Nights in Rodanthe is a train wreck if ever there was on; giving meaning to the fact that even if a movie starts out well, it can end up in the gutter pretty quickly. Following on from the opening, the movie then resorts to cheap melodramatic contrivances, and demeans both its characters and performers by negating their roles to mere romantic plot devices used to set up act three's ridiculously sappy ending. The middle act, which finds both characters slowly falling for each other, isn't all that bad, and while it does get irksome towards the end, even such a closing would have saved the movie from being a complete disaster. Nevertheless, with a few moments of interest, usually inherent in the performance of Gere, Nights in Rodanthe isn't without its positives, but you certainly have to do a lot of looking to find them.
As a romantic drama, Nights tries to do one thing and one thing only and that is to make with the mushy. Director George C. Wolfe in his big screen debut here opts to take this to an extreme however, and even goes to the point of rejecting any focus at all on characters past the half-way mark. After this point, Nights in Rodanthe turns into a holiday from hell. Mawkish, banal and overly pretentious, both Wolfe and the writers here adopt a tone of whimsy light-headedness that often clashes with the story's much more serious (at least, that's what it tries to be) subplot involving a death caused by one of these characters. What's more annoying is that the movie's earlier sequences, which although clearly unfocused and seemingly directionless, at least had some humanity present in its central figures, these earlier moments of promise are forgotten. After forty minutes or so, all that's left for Wolfe to do is to drag on the romance as far as he can to the point where we're no longer watching real people fall in love, we're simply watching an outline for a romance movie. Character A and Character B going through the motions
Yawn. Haven't we done this before? To be fair both performers try and make the best of their undoubtedly tricky situation. Throughout there are moments of genuine chemistry between both Gere and Lane, and while the romance isn't exactly palpable enough to sustain much interest past the halfway mark, they at least keep the thing going as best as they can. Essentially however you get the feeling that both would rather be somewhere else; in between these instances of chemistry are scenes which fail to deliver any emotion whatsoever, even though the director seems sure that what he's doing is going to get your eyes watery. The truth is, Nights in Rodanthe is a sappy, overly emotional romantic drama; so much so that it's absurd. I can't feel for these people and I can't feel for their petty outbreaks of self-loathing angst. When I begin arguing with characters in my head whilst I'm obviously supposed to be feeling pity for them, I disconnect; it's over. Stop trying to engage me. This happened an hour into Nights in Rodanthe, and although I could have been won back, sadly it only gets worse from there.
It's hard to see why anyone would enjoy such a film. Sure enough if you're a major fan of "weepies", for some reason enjoy watching people cry a lot and don't mind romance that feels generic and predictable then you might just get something from Nights, but even then you'll probably feel under-whelmed. There's no denying I had hope for this film; with Gere and Lane helming what looked to be a mature love story, I figured the worst that could happen would be if I was subjected to a teaspoon of fairy tale whimsy. Unfortunately however, I did get that, and I also got a shallow, unremarkable feature that was essentially a few scenes drawn out far too long with a third act that wasn't necessary or even enjoyable in the slightest. Some decent individual performances throughout, but with limited chemistry and an overwritten, overly romanticised script, Nights in Rodanthe isn't a night to remember by any means.
- A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)
