Message in a Bottle (1999)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Absolutely brilliant

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

(Major Spoilers) At over the 2-hour mark this bloated drama directed by Luis Mandoki features an over-the-top monologue from Robin Wright narrating to a string orchestra fading to credit in blaring fashion. "Message in a Bottle" is poorly edited and taken from a novel by Nicholas Sparks. It stars Kevin Costner in his usual light-talking and pause-filled acting and Wright doing a Satisfactory but perfunctory job. Paul Newman thankfully shows up in about 25 min of runtime to breath reality and some spots of fun into this clunky, overlong, paperweight. The director employs intercut cheese-fest MTV music shorts that are so common today, and signal a lack of thought in cinema. Moreover, dialog is weighty and there's too much droning on of the past. By the end, Costners character's demise is an epilogue of the actual story, and an eye-roller. 5/10 - not recommended

Theresa Osborne (Robin Wright) is a newspaper researcher and single mom. While on vacation, she finds a bottle with a poetic note about a lost love. Every women is fascinated, and she goes in search of the origins of the message in a bottle. She finds Garret Blake (Kevin Costner) still haunted by his dead love Catherine. He's living with his father Dodge (Paul Newman). She doesn't tell him about the messages and they fall in love.This is the first movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. There are some amazing actors at work here. However, it really struggles to find some real emotions and real chemistry. Theresa is basically a heat seeking missile. She just can't stop smiling at him. This is clunky melodrama of the highest order. His fight with Catherine's in-laws held potential, but it's not enough. These people are just not real. The whole movie including the music, the directing, the conflict, the dialog, and the performances are all driving relentlessly to unabashed unsurprising sentimentality.

This is a well done romance genre that you may even be able to watch with a spouse or boyfriend. "The Notebook" was far too sentimental and trite. But this film has some good visuals, an unusual (if far-fetched) premise. And solid performances by Robin Wright, Kevin Costner as Garrett Blake, and Paul Newman in a cameo role as Dodge Blake, Garret's cantankerous father.Primarily Teresa Osborne is divorced, lonely, and on vacation finds a bottle with a love letter "Dear Katherine" The letter is a "mea culpa", an apology to a true love.Osborne works for the Chicago Tribune, and returns from vacation, motivated to create a story and research the true origins of the bottle and who actually sent this to whom. Yes, this requires suspension of disbelief. At any rate, the region is traced to an Outer Banks, NC location.The visuals, ocean and sense of loss are used repeatedly, beautiful and invoke a sense of longing and loss. Teresa at first meets Garret Osborne's father Dodge. He is humorous at times, drinks beer and tell his son (Garrett, who has been mourning the death of Katherine) that he needs to get on with his life.Garret Blake, who has spent an inordinate of time in mourning for his wife, is the author of the letter. Teresa tries to engage him in more conversation about his deceased wife. Eventually as this is a romance, she and Garret develop an intimacy. It is visual, candles, ocean and rain. But nicely done and not overly talky or trite.I will not spoil the ending as there is a twist to the ending in this story. It is an interesting story, and not overly mired in sentimentality. 8/10.

SPOILER AHEAD.Imagine this scenario: You are a guy who just had great sex with a hot woman you met a little while back and that you really like, the beginning of a steamy relationship. While she gets cleaned up, you rifle through her stuff to find that you apparently did not meet her by chance as you had thought before, but that she had found some old love letters you wrote to a previous love of yours, and apparently was so taken by them that she tracked you down, romanced you, and, just a few minutes ago, screwed the living daylights out of you. Okay, imagine that? So here's the question: What would a guy in this situation do? If your answer is something like "get all emotional, pack his bags and run away in a huff", then you (a) are most likely a woman and (b) might like this movie.For everybody else who has just the faintest inkling of how men actually work (which somewhat surprisingly does not seem to include the apparently heterosexual male who authored this story, although there is always the possibility that he's just playing to his audience), this is just one cliché too far in a chic flick riddled with bad, bad romanticky stereotypes, super-corny acting, and dull by-the-numbers predictable storytelling.The one faint ray of light in this stinker is Paul Newman --- his role isn't a very big one, it isn't very well written, but he does with it what he can. It's not enough to make this worthwhile, though. Avoid.