Nov. 6, 2008

Reviewed by Richard Lee Zuras

Released 9/26/08

1 hr. 37 min.

PG-13

George C. Wolfe/Village Roadshow Pictures

Richard Gere

Diane Lane

Scott Glenn

Mae Whitman

James Franco

 In the motion picture biz they call this a weeper. A tear-jerker. On t.v. they call this Lifetimey. Hallmarkey. In the sciences they call this a litmus test: in alkaline litmus turns blue, and in acid it turns red. In politics, in election years, we gather around the t.v. to watch the map go blue or red. Seldom are any of these deciding agents maleable.

So no review of this kind of film will ever convince a red to go blue or a blue to go red. In short, you are either easily given to tears and are thus, teary, or you are not. This is either a 0.0 or a 5.0 depending on where you sit on this romantic dialectic.

But make no mistake: Nights in Rodanthe is a Lifetime movie. It is full of schlock and deus ex machina and characters who act one way and then another. Most disturbingly, it is about a pair of Actors more than it is about a pair of Characters. The film reunites Gere and Lane, assuming that if it worked before it will work again. The trouble with that theory begins with the difference in scripts. In Unfaithful Lane’s character cheats on Gere’s character by having an affair with a man closer to her own age. In other words, one of the reasons we bought Unfaithful is turned on its head in Nights in Rodanthe. Here Lane, her character still married, falls for Gere (and I mean falls head over heels), who is sixteen years her senior. Interestingly, the film never gives Gere’s age and attempts to youth his character by making his son 28, when they could have easily made him 35.

Here’s where things get difficult–and they should get difficult for the blues and the reds. It is too, too obvious that Lane and Franco (playing Gere’s son), in their one shared scene, look better on-screen together than Gere and Lane. Or perhaps you will think not. If you think not, you probably think not because Franco’s so young. In truth, he’s several years closer in age to Lane than is Gere. And if you think the film’s producers weren’t aware of this, you might ask yourself why they chose to die Gere’s hair brown on the one-sheet. Gere will be 60 next year. That’s why he has grey hair. Perhaps this has something to do with the mystery behind Franco’s uncredited status in this film. Or perhaps Franco knew what movie critics would soon know.

For those still unconvinced, I offer one more element. Anyone with a passing knowledge of psychology had to be thinking about the age difference between Gere and Lane, and what would drive a woman to be unable to spend a weekend alone without a man. The clue, interestingly enough, is writ large in the opening scene of the film. A dreaming and contented Lane is watching a vision of her father. He is spinning her around, on a beach no less, and she is utterly safe and alone with him. Throughout the film we are told Lane has recently lost her father and is grieving him. Her friend even points out to Lane that her current husband wasn’t there for Lane when her father died. Enter Gere, who is old enough to be Lane’s father. Watch Gere protect Lane from a falling curio cabinet. Watch Gere walk on the same beach with her. Perhaps the film should have been titled Nights in Electra.

bottom line 2.0/5.0