An average movie

Nowadays, the movies based on Nicholas Parks' books (just like the books themselves) are quite popular but the opinions are quite extreme concerning those. Indeed, the fans love them but the rest of us usually are not really thrilled by those movies. Personally, except for 'The Notebook' which I really enjoyed (surprisignly, director Nick Cassavetes said that it is his worst movie so far), I can't say I really enjoyed those. Anyway, this movie was the very first of these adaptations and, I must admit, it was actually not bad at all. Indeed, Kevin Costner and Robin Wright were both terribly charismatic and had some great chemistry together. Furthermore, the great Paul Newman had a small part and delivered, as usual, a very solid performance. Unfortunately, like many Sparks stories, the whole thing was based on some very contrived romantic situation and, at the end of the day, you either buy or not. Personally, I found it really hard to swallow but what really sold the deal for me was this terribly disappointing ending. Don't misunderstand me, I don't mind at all when a story ends badly but, in this case, it just felt really manufactured and it was there only to add some drama to an already cluttered melodramatic plot. I mean, I had a hard time to care about the convoluted plot but thanks to the decent directing and the work of the actors involved, when I was finally starting to believe in and invest myself in this romance, this ending made me really feel as if the whole thing was just a waste of time. Still, even though it is really flawed, there are some good stuff here and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10