Skip to main content

Message in a Bottle (1999)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Message in a Bottle. Feature film. (1999, 131 mins) IMDB

...Here's where I wanted to see a Hollywood ending and was greatly disappointed....

I

so much wanted to enjoy this movie and there are some moments but, well, there are lots of buts.

A bit about the story. It's a romance, a dramatic one, not a romantic comedy. I don't think there's a comic moment in the film.

Costner plays a shipwright on the southern east coast of the US. He was married at one point, to his true love, in his words, his true north, but she died. He wallows in his grief and at one point he typed up love notes to her, stuffed them into bottles and tossed them into the Atlantic ocean where presumably the Gulf Stream carried them north where on a Cape Code beach our other love interest played by Robin digs the bottle out of the sand.

She's a divorced single mom. They are both in the late thirties or early forties. She's captivated by the love notes and begins a search for the mysterious lover. Since she's a researcher at the Chicago Tribune (convenience) she tracks him down, visits and falls in love all over again.

He's not so sure because he hasn't let go of his wife. That's the battle. He has to let go of the past and move on to this present situation and he does until he finds out what brought them together. They had a good thing going until he finds the bottles and messages and newspaper coverage and leaves her. They had to split and do.

His transformation is shown with a boat he started working on with his late wife, but stopped building with her death. With someone new in his life, he gets back to building it and launching it and sets sail for Chicago (it's possible), but tragedy strikes and we have a lame, "heroic" ending.

The ending is such a downer, it destroys our sense of hope. This was supposed to be a Hollywood film, but I guess they filmmakers weren't aware of Hollywood endings. I'm not for or against Hollywood endings, but the ending must fit the story and in this instance our hero dives from his sailboat during a raging storm in the Atlantic, in winter. It's a crazy thing to do and he does it for no reason. There is no reason he should dive into the water.

I also found a great of the dialogue between the two, especially early on, to be adolescent. It was as if they were bashful, thirteen-year olds at a school dance in the gym. Not what you'd expect for adult romance.

And from the hard to believe folder, it's hard to believe this film is ten years old. And more incredible that Paul Newman is gone. We knew it would come, but, well, he is one of my favourite film stars. Cary Grant ranks number one and Newman is probably number two.

Posted 2009/02/08 at 20h01ET in Movie Commentary.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Piece of the Action (1977)

Saturday, March 7, 2009 A Piece of the Action. Feature film. (1977, 135 mins) IMDB ... Who would you have over for dinner? Sidney Poitier or Bill Cosby. ... A PIECE OF THE ACTION is the third film starring Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. Poitier also directed the films. (And yes, I would be fascinating to have both them sitting around a table for dinner.) We're in Chicago and I love the setup for this film. It's clever, fun and interesting. It starts during the dark of night. Crosby is a cat burglar robbing a vault in a bank. He's by himself, all the tools he needs, and doesn't speak a word of dialogue for at least the first twenty minutes of the film. It must have been killing him. His robbery goes off successfully. (It includes a jump from a six or seven story window. There was a similar scene in their earlier films.) When the cops arrive during the daylight, they haven't a clue and we catch a glimpse of James Earl Jones as a detect...
Post a Comment
Read more

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read...
2 comments
Read more

No Reservations (2007)

Saturday, May 2, 2009 No Reservations. Feature film. (2007, 104 mins) IMDB ... I so much wanted to like this film but couldn't ... T his film had two things I like a great deal: romance and cooking, but they didn't come together for me in this film. I think I know why. The female lead doesn't strike me as a romantic leading lady. That's just me. I also found the story line stale and uninteresting. Our hero lives in NYC working at a fine dining restaurant where she is the chef and dictator. Everything about her life is about cooking. Nothing else seems to matter. No children. No relationships. Then her life is kicked apart. Her sister and niece travel to visit her but before they arrive, there's an accident. The mother dies and little Zoe has to live with her aunt. Our hero struggles to include a new person into her life but what follows is so predictable as to be boring. To add even more complications to our hero's life, her sous...
Post a Comment
Read more