The Film
Reuniting Cotton Club and Unfaithful co-stars Diane Lane and Richard Gere, Nights in Rodanthe is the latest big-screen adaptation of the works of romance novelist Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle). The clichés fly fast and furious in this tale of a frustrated wife and mother (Lane), rethinking her relationship with her caddish husband while spending a week running an oceanside inn in Rodanthe, North Carolina as a favor to her sassy friend. A rich, handsome, but emotionally distant surgeon (Gere) is the only guest, stopping over to meet with the husband of a patient who died on his operating table, before hopping a jet to join his estranged son who now runs a charity clinic in South America.
And if that weren't far-fetched enough, unbelievable dialogue, silly local legends, "forgotten dreams" subplots and more head-scratching scenes ensue. Even the usually terrific Ms. Lane can't seem to deliver her lines with much conviction. It's all a bit much to swallow, heavy-handed and horribly predictable, almost as if director George C. Wolfe is banking on the fact that his audience has never seen a romance movie before.
Also check out Joe Lozito's take on Nights in Rodanthe.
The Picture
The kindest I can be about the video quality here is to say that at its best it can look a little clearer than DVD. Colors within the 2.4:1 frame are a little off, often leaning too far into blue, for an unnatural appearance. Process shots as during the scenes of the big storm have a telltale flatness to them that does not reproduce well in the home theater. There's a frequent mushiness to anything that isn't either brightly lit or sharply focused, along with lifeless blacks and buzzy darks. Backgrounds are noisy, wallpaper can be twitchy, and even something as seemingly innocuous as a wooden headboard was at times flickering at me. Several of Richard Gere's costumes display compression artifacting on the rougher textures.
I know that many Warner Blu-rays can default to more ubiquitous Dolby Digital so I stepped through all the soundtracks on Nights, only to discover that Dolby Digital was the only game in Rodanthe: no Dolby TrueHD, no DTS-HD. The movie has a musical pulse with a distinct Southern flavor, but even with its admirable mixing across the 5.1 channels, the overall experience is somewhat dull, lacking any real depth and failing to create genuine involvement. We're shown a live performance on a pier at one point, but it doesn't sound "live," just the same as any other song thrown into the movie. A prolonged storm sequence at least puts rain and thunder into the rears, with the occasional effect used to evoke a sense of danger.
The Extras
Like the movie itself, the extras here tend to be talky and self-indulgent. "The Nature of Love" (21 minutes) assembles interviews with the director, two stars, author Sparks and beloved musician Emmylou Harris to discuss their inspirations regarding the project, reading a lot of nonexistent subtext into the proceedings. Additional featurettes bring us up-close with Sparks; who describes his "perfect day" with such mundane specifics as to induce sleep; and Harris, each about 12 minutes. The deleted/alternate scenes are served up with mandatory director commentary, five in all including a cut song, seven minutes total, with a 5.1-channel mix. The music video for Gavin Rossdale's song "Love Remains the Same" runs four minutes, and all of the above are presented in high-definition.
If you have a properly connected BD Profile 2.0 deck, the disc enables access to Warner's BD-Live online portal, although at press time there was no Nights in Rodanthe-specific content, rather a Dark Knight trailer begins playing almost immediately. The second disc, a DVD, contains a Digital Copy of the movie for PC, portable Windows Media devices, and iTunes/iPod.
Final Thoughts
I suppose that there are some romance-starved folks in this world eager to lap up Nights in Rodanthe, or anything else that bestseller Sparks cranks out, I just ain't one of them. Better video and true high-def audio might not have boosted my opinion of the movie, but they surely would not have hurt.
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