Nights in Rodanthe (2008)

O Masterpiece
O Excellent
O Good
X OK
O Mediocrity
O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / January 20, 2009

Rodanthe is a community in North Carolina that’s ambiguously situated amid Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks. In 2002 American author Nicholas Sparks published a novel titled “Nights in Rodanthe,” which this movie is adapted from. In 2006 I released a CD whose first track featured a song I wrote titled “Rodanthe,” which is based on a monumental vacation that my family spent there in 1988. So how does this obscure place become the muse for writers’ artistic creations? It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there.

I haven’t read Sparks’ book, but the film gives us Richard Gere playing Paul Flanner, a visibly agitated doctor who has an uncomfortably unpleasant matter to attend to in Rodanthe. Diane Lane is cast as Adrienne Willis, a divorced (or perhaps separated) mother of two who sneaks away for a few days to think about her ex’s intense pleas to get back together, and to oversee her friend Jean’s (Viola Davis) beachfront bed-and-breakfast — also in Rodanthe. The two burdened singletons meet, and though they are distracted by their respective problems, they are not so preoccupied as to fail to notice how appealing middle-aged counterparts can be.

I’m told that the movie follows the book fairly closely, so I’ll aim my critique at Sparks for the movie’s “imminent storm” scenario, which is a heavy-handed metaphor meant to parallel inevitable conflicts … a storm, I should mention, that leads to an illogical cause-and-effect sequence: The storm hits; the two are frightened; so they have sex.

Screenwriters (and authors) love the “set-up and pay-off” plot frill, where something addressed earlier in the story is “Paul Harvey-ed,” later revealing “the rest of the story.” “Nights in Rodanthe” strains a bit with an equestrian set-up and pay-off.

And perhaps the lowest point of the movie is a pantry-cleaning scene — surely that isn’t in the book! (Watching it is mildly tolerable, but I can’t imagine reading about it.) On the other hand, the highlight of “Nights in Rodanthe” is the doctor’s discussion with Robert Torrelson (Scott Glenn), with whom Paul has the inciting-incident conflict.

Some couples work well together on screen. Gere and Lane are two such people. If you like what you see here, they were also cast together in Coppola’s “The Cotton Club” (1984) and “Unfaithful” in 2002 (but Olivier Martinez tends to get in the way a little of the latter).

In summary, since it is so steeped in melodrama and manipulating emotional cues, “Nights in Rodanthe” is basically a visual manifestation of a country song committed to film.

P.S. This concluding tidbit has nothing to do with “Nights in Rodanthe” or the cinema, for that matter, but I note here — if only for posterity — that today, Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States. Obama is the 44th U.S. president.

Directed by George C. Wolfe
Richard Gere / Diane Lane / Scott Glenn
Romance 97 min.
MPAA: PG-13 (for some sensuality)

U.S. Release Date: September 26, 2008
Copyright 2008: 316