![]() (READ: TIME’s interview with Julianne Hough ) Hough, sturdy and placid, is no trembling doe on the run and she fails to make Katie compelling or even interesting. The greatest concern Safe Haven evokes is for the innocents around her who may suffer at the hands of the brutish police detective (David Lyons) chasing her. Not to heap praise on Sleeping with the Enemy, but of all the movies Roberts made in her 20s, none exploited her talent for displaying vulnerability more effectively than this TV-movie woman-in-peril thriller. ![]() The movies are so alike it’s a wonder someone hasn’t sued, although it seems unlikely that Hough is on the kind of trajectory Roberts, fresh off Pretty Woman, was at that point. In Safe Haven, Lasse Hallstrom’s second adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks’ book (the first was 2010’s Dear John) cute Katie (Julianne Hough) goes through almost exactly the same motions, although absent any compulsive towel straightening and with the addition of a supernatural twist. The movie was an adaptation of a novel by Nancy Prince. Living under an assumed identity, Laura finds love in a town bucolic enough to have a Fourth of July day parade, although the bad husband eventually shows up and memorably tidies up her bathroom (most women dream of this) before tries to kill her and her new beau. His fans no doubt will swoon over this tear-jerking finale, even while critics stare at the screen with jaws open in disbelief.Follow 1991 film Sleeping with the Enemy featured Julia Roberts as Laura Burney, a nice young woman trying to restart her life after escaping an abusive and controlling husband. This last-minute twist is shameless and stupefying, but it demonstrates why Sparks has an army of fervent readers. It does, however, have one sentimental surprise at the end that testifies to Sparks’ storytelling shrewdness. The seaside locations are tenderly evoked by cinematographer Terry Stacey and production designer Kara Lindstrom, but the film isn’t visually memorable or dramatically vibrant. It’s hard to see much evidence of the talent that brightened his My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules or even Chocolat. The picture is certainly competent, but a dozen other journeyman directors could have executed this piece just as efficiently. Hallstrom’s direction is generally lackluster. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that Hallstrom, who burst into prominence with his fine direction of child actors in the 1985 Swedish film My Life as a Dog, fails to draw vivid performances from the two actors cast as Alex’s children. Hough, better known as a singer and dancer than a dramatic actress, is likably spunky, but Duhamel fades into the background, and there are no lively supporting players in the ensemble. To put it as charitably as possible, the actors in Safe Haven are not in the same league. The best Sparks movie, The Notebook, had the strongest cast, with talented newcomers Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams balancing seasoned veterans James Garner and Gena Rowlands. They All Do’Ī related problem is the casting. VIDEO: Nicholas Sparks on ‘Safe Haven’s’ Box-Office Prospects: ‘It’ll Do Fine. When her nemesis finally arrives in North Carolina, the film does develop some effectively suspenseful moments. ![]() But the gauzy romantic interludes prove to be something of a yawn. To jack up the tension, director Lasse Hallstrom (who also helmed Dear John) keeps intercutting scenes of a grim, hard-drinking Boston cop ( David Lyons) determined to track Katie down. In addition, the two main characters are such paragons that there are no real psychological impediments to their union. Still, this complication isn’t especially well developed in the screenplay by Dana Stevens and Gage Lansky. Alex’s daughter, who barely remembers her mother, warms to Katie immediately, but her older brother has a harder time with his father’s new relationship. The first problem with the film is that the burgeoning romance is too flat to generate intense audience empathy. Before long, however, a nasty blast from Katie’s past arrives to threaten her newfound bliss. Because of their troubled histories, they approach each other warily, but there’s little doubt about where their relationship is headed. There she meets a sensitive widower, Alex ( Josh Duhamel), raising two young children on his own. In this case our heroine, Katie ( Julianne Hough), runs away from a toxic marriage in Boston, boards a bus and, on a whim, gets off in a small seaside community in North Carolina. The mystery plot recalls a 1991 Julia Roberts movie, Sleeping With the Enemy, in which the heroine fled an abusive husband and tried to reinvent herself in a brand-new community.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |