Based on a Book

If you thought The Notebook was a tearjerker, get out the hankies, pull up a chair, and get ready to have your heart monkey-wrenched by Nicholas Sparks's second star-crossed love story, Message in a Bottle. When Theresa Osborne takes a much-needed summer... Read More

If you thought The Notebook was a tearjerker, get out the hankies, pull up a chair, and get ready to have your heart monkey-wrenched by Nicholas Sparks's second star-crossed love story, Message in a Bottle. When Theresa Osborne takes a much-needed summer holiday at Cape Cod, she finds a lot more than a break from the hustle and bustle. On an early-morning jog along Cape Cod Bay, she comes across a corked bottle with a scrolled-up message inside that reads, "My Dearest Catherine, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together..." It bobbles around in the same vein for several more paragraphs and ends with "...am alone on the pier and I do not care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry. Garret."

Garret may eat quiche, but no bother--before you can say "Look! I found two more letters!" Theresa is hot on his trail and determined to find this mysterious yet sensitive message-in-a-bottle man. She finds him at a sleepy North Carolina port, working on his beloved sailboat, The Happenstance. From there, a romance buds and blossoms into a colorful bouquet of emotional baggage. Theresa has problems with her past--or, more accurately, her past is a problem. She is so scarred from her "I'm a super churchgoing guy now that I've run out on my wife" ex-husband that she hasn't tried to date since her divorce some three or four years before. And who is Catherine? And what's Garret's bag, anyway? When Theresa finds out, she plunges to the depths of her soul and uncorks a whopper of a secret about herself, bringing Garret to terms with who he really is.

Message in a Bottle has the earmarks of sentimental tongue-wagging at its finest and should please romantics and cynics alike--it's sure to bring romantics to their knees, while cynics will be slapping theirs in laughter. --Rebekah Warren

If, as they say, you're in a certain mood, Message in a Bottle can be just the ticket. Based on Nicholas Sparks's bestselling novel, this handsome but overly calculated romance tale stars Robin Wright Penn as Theresa, a Chicago Tribune researcher who ... Read More

If, as they say, you're in a certain mood, Message in a Bottle can be just the ticket. Based on Nicholas Sparks's bestselling novel, this handsome but overly calculated romance tale stars Robin Wright Penn as Theresa, a Chicago Tribune researcher who finds a note encased in a green bottle that has floated onto a Cape Cod shore. The message within is a heartfelt, yearning declaration of love to a woman named Catherine, but the author is unknown until Theresa (rather improbably) tracks him down in North Carolina. He's Garret Blake (Kevin Costner), a taciturn builder of sailboats and a grieving widower whose late wife, poetically speaking, was the intended recipient of the seafaring note Theresa found. Theresa, a divorcée with a son, decides to meet Garret, only to find him as bottled-up as his message. Nevertheless, a romance blooms on the strength of quality time in a sailboat and lots of cuddling, though the script tosses in bits of conflict to keep their relationship spicy. Directed by Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman), this love story is entirely by the numbers, with Costner inhabiting (rather than performing) a stock fantasy of a man perfect in every way save his broken heart. Penn brings more vibrancy to her equally predictable part, but fortunately for all, Paul Newman, John Savage, Robbie Coltrane, and Illeana Douglas are on hand in nicely textured character parts. Sometimes predictability is exactly what one wants when settling in for an evening of home video, and this movie fits the bill nicely. The appealing cinematography is by ace cameraman Caleb Deschanel. --Tom Keogh