"Safe Haven"

Hey guys. So, last night my mother convinced (and by that I mean forced those who were unwilling) my family to watch Nicholas Sparks' latest film: Safe Haven. Ironically, this movie made me want to go find refuge somewhere other than my living room, where it was being played. Find a safe haven away from Safe Haven, if you will.

Nice to see that Nicholas Sparks is mixing it up
when it comes to his movie posters...
hey, wait a second!

Beaches, sunsets, beaches at sunset. Who says he's not being original?

As you can possibly tell from my thinly veiled contempt, I am not a fan of Nicholas Sparks' work. He blatantly panders to a very specific audience, an audience that I do not consider myself part of but I am, unfortunately for me, close enough to it that I have to hear a lot about and/or watch his films (they can't make me read the books. Just no). His stories are consistently fantasy fodder for teenage girls and housewives, with some arbitrary twist that is ultimately resolved in the end anyway so why even bother other than to half-heartedly convince yourself that you're not simply writing crappy romance novels. It's not crappy romance, it's crappy romance...with a twist!

Ugh, if you want to write a story that is not a romance, make the romance secondary. If it's a romance, make it interesting. The way it is, it barely comes in above "insert yourself here" twilight style romance novels. I do not like. But that may just be me.

Anyway, what's the plot of this generic NS romance, I hear you ask? The basic story is that our protagonist, "Katie" (played by Julianne Hough) had killed someone and is on the run from the law. She gets on the only bus that the cop chasing her doesn't check and gets to the small fishing town of Southport, North Carolina, where she decides to stay despite the fact that it would make a lot more sense not to stay within reach one of the bus' stops. The first ten minutes or so is her getting a job, a house (short notice much? Do real estate agents generally have whole decent sized houses lying around to sell to complete strangers at a moment's notice? This is never explained, because real estate isn't romantic enough). She also talks to the only guy in the town who is around her age, the obvious love interest, and has some interactions with a little girl, who it turns out is his daughter. These cutesy conversations are mildly entertaining if not obvious sympathy fuel for the character. The audience is meant to think "She can't be a killer, she's so good with kids!". A note for future reference, no one in this film has any idea what sociopaths or psychopaths are. It is possible for someone to be a cold blooded killer and not look it, people! The world is not simply "You seem nice, you must be a good person." Has nobody seen "Dexter" or "American Psycho"?

She seems perfectly pleasant, doesn't mean she can't be a killer!

A must admit, I went into this film knowing nothing of the premise and I did intrigue me. A Nicolas Sparks female character with moral ambiguity and questionable motives? This could actually be interesting! But no. SPOILER warning here. I'm gonna stop summarising the plot about now, just mention major plot points. There are two twists in this movie. One is totally predictable (when I was told there was a big twist by my mother, I expected better). The other is SO STUPID IT WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO ACTUALLY MURDER SOMEONE! It's totally unnecessary and pointless and sappy and... I'll get back to that later.

So there are some scenes of Katie settling into the small town, some gratuitous "looking out over the ocean at sunset" shots for the trailer and the introduction of the only other youngish female character, played by Cobie Smulders or Robin from "How I Met Your Mother". She is one of the more interesting characters but she gets very little screen time. I originally thought that one of the reveals would be that this character develops feelings for Katie (the relationship is built up like it's leading to that, there's a suitable amount of chemistry and this is before the love interest has had much introduction) but no. I personally think this would've been an interesting dynamic but apparently there are no lesbians in the Nicholas Sparks universe.

Then, of course, we are introduced to our love interest, Alex, played by Josh Dunamel. He works in the "hardware and other stuff" shop and he is clearly interested in Katie, despite her reciprocating none of it and the fact that his wife died of cancer (another Nicholas Sparks cliché, yay!) an undetermined length of time ago. It seems recent enough considering that his son (he has two kids, a boy and a girl) is still pretty torn up about it. Geez guy, you'd think if a girl is clearly not looking for a relationship and you have your own family issues to deal with, you'd leave her alone! But, of course, he wears her down and they begin spending more time together, having heart-to-hearts and such. 

Nick Sparks loves his beach scenes.
I don't complain because... Josh Dunamel.
Well played, Sparks, well played...

Oh, there's also this weird thing where she's painting her floor and the floorboards in her kitchen keep breaking. It's never explained why she's painting her floor, I think it's an attempt to make her quirky. Alex orders paint in specially for Katie to show that he likes her, I guess, even though it's obvious anyway. They also use the floor painting thing as a reason for Alex to come into her house a few times, which begs the question, why not just have her painting the walls? And that's the end of that not sub plot. There's also some running...thing (is it a joke? I don't know what it is) A running thing where one of the doors to the shop Alex works in is stuck and people keep walking into it. This isn't really for laughs, if I understand this film's comic tone (hint, there isn't one) so I don't know why it's in there. It does kinda come back, but I'll get to that later.  

She's your wife? And it turns out
her twin sister has amnesia and
killed your father!
Find out more next week! 

This is where I start getting into real SPOILER territory, turn back if now you want to see this film and be somewhat surprised by the twists. From the beginning of the film there are cuts to the stereotypical "obsessed cop" who is searching for Katie on grounds of first degree murder. Then in a big, shocker, ehr mah gersh, did not see that coming twist, it turns out that he is her husband, an abusive drunk and Boston police officer, who has made up the whole thing about her murdering someone because he wants an excuse to chase her down after they had a fight and she left (she does stab him in the side in self defense but he's not really affected by this much). Oh, relief! She's not a murderer, she's just misunderstood! Bite me, movie. That was an actually interesting plot point and you killed it (ironically). So the chief of police in Boston find out that he's doing all this (the guy sent out a notice to police departments in other states, how did the chief not know this?) and suspends him in one of the crappiest reveals I've ever seen. "Stop all this, she's not a murderer, she's your wife!" Honestly? I thought I was watching a soap opera. I did consider this possibility in my predictions but dismissed it on the grounds of "Well, why would the Boston PD let him launch this huge investigation if there was no body? They can't possibly be so stupid as to not keep track of something as severe as MURDER." I also briefly (and jokingly) considered the "sixth sense" twist, that the cop is the guy who was murdered's ghost out for revenge. But that would be too stupid.

Anyway, in the meantime Katie and Alex are getting together. Alex, visiting his friend the town chief of police for reasons relating to the 4th of July parade, sees the wanted poster for Katie and confronts her. This scene is choc full of the stupid that this film embodies. He's yelling at her, outraged that, what... she didn't tell him? Dude, seriously, is that information you'd expect someone to offer up if it wasn't relevant? "Oh, by the way, I killed a man." As well as this, the guy seems more upset that she's been using a fake name, her real name is Erin or something. Yes, because that's your main concern in this scenario. I can accept that you're a murderer but I can't believe you didn't tell me your real name?! I feel so betrayed!

So she storms off, completely put out that someone would see an official police report saying she's suspected of murder and think she's a murderer! How would someone possibly come to that outrageous conclusion?! She packs her bags and is about to get on a boat somewhere when Alex realises the error of his accusing ways and rushes to her, professing his love for her and begging her to stay. They kiss and that scene's over. This is the part where you begin to question many, many things. If the film is trying to be realistic it really should have considered these points. It looks sloppy and stupid otherwise.

1. Why the hell does Alex believe her? If you have evidence that this woman is suspected of murder and you still know very little about her other than she's good with kids and willing to have sex with you, on what grounds are you basing your unfailing belief in her claims?!!! Serial killers go undiscovered for so long precisely because of douchehat morons like this guy!

2. Why did Katie not go to the police? True, her abuser is a cop but there are other officers she could quite easily go to, especially considering that what he's doing is doubly dubious because he's abusing his state given power. This movie is essentially redundant because the protagonist is not smart enough to know that if you're subject to abuse, you call the police!

3. Does Katie know that she didn't kill her husband? If so, why does she keep having these nightmares about killing someone? She seems to know he's chasing her, why doesn't she go to the authorities somewhere else?  She's being chased by a madman and no one is dead, why all the secrecy? I know she's been beaten by her husband and all that but there's a point where common sense kicks in. If she's had the courage to leave him surely she could tell the police!

So there's that unpleasantness, the climax of the film occurs when the cop finds her, sees her with Alex and decides to burn the shop down. There is fire and struggling and eventually the cop is shot in self defence while he's trying to shoot Katie. Oh, I forgot to mention that the "stuck door" thing is reprised in the form of the cop walking into it, then using brute force to unstick it. Why include this, movie? There is no point to it whatsoever except maybe to show that the cop is violent, because there were no other indicators of that! I thought briefly that the cop would try to shoot Alex and miss, hitting the boy but no, that would involve some kind of lingering connflict! Everything is resolved in the end, nothing is lost, the two end up together, the kid gets to be ok with his dad's new girlfriend, Cobie Smulders goes off on her travels because that's her dream yadda yadda yadda. The only thing missing is a wedding.

Cobie Smulders (brunette) and Julianne Hough (blonde)

"But Rachel", I hear you ask, "What about the second twist? The incredibly stupid one?" I will address that now. One thing I forgot to mention was that the dead mother wrote a load of letters to her kids "on their graduation" and "on their wedding day", soppy, tear-jerker crap like that. It turns out one of the letters is "for her". Alex gives it to Katie after the resolution and she reads it. It's fairly stupid and unrealistic, it has lots of stupid little lines that annoy me like "I wish I could see you together" and "he truly loves you, I can only hope you love him back". Bleeeeauuugh! Unnecessary sentimentality, make it stop! Anyway, she read this letter, you're supposed to cry or whatever. And then, oh, then you see a picture of the mother. AND IT'S COBIE SMULDERS!!! Yes, poor reader, you read that right.

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN'T GET WORSE, THEY THROW THAT AT YOU!!! 

NICHOLAS SPARKS SHAYAMALAN-ED IT! 

NICHOLAS SPARKS IS OFFICIALLY THE SHAYAMALAN OF ROMANCE NOVELS!

Not only is it the most incredibly shitty, cop out twist ending ever, it is totally unneeded! They didn't need to have an idiotic ghost afternote subplot! They didn't need to add more patronising, exploitative sentiment! The story was over! No, they just had to slam that in your face, like "Bet you didn't see that coming!". No, movie, I didn't. BECAUSE IT'S TOO STUPID TO EVEN IMAGINE! In the sixth sense, where they had this twist ending, it at least made sense. The boy in that could see ghosts, there was a cohesive lead up, it made sense. This? No. You can't do that. You have no right, movie! I- I have no explanation for why someone would feel the need to chuck this in at the end. So stupid. Ugh.

This movie in a nutshell.

Actually my dad and I had this little joke throughout the film about Cobie Smulders being the only other youngish female character. Why had Alex not made a pass at her if his standard plan of action seems to be "You're hot, I shall pester you until you date me". Silly us. Turns out the one youngish guy in the town has banged both the youngish women.

So that's Safe Haven. I didn't like this movie. Pointless and idiotic plot twists aside, the romance is just dull. The have all the clichés in there, the dancing in an empty shop, the dead wife, the caught in a rainstorm, romantic canoeing, the kids having a problem with their dad's new love. It's all in there. There is so much effort put into establishing chemistry between the romantic leads, it's blatantly obvious and it ultimately fails. They have a conversation about kale and whether or not there's protein in it. KALE! The little girl and Katie have better conversations. Katie has very few solid personality traits other than "nice" and Alex is kind of obsessed with her, strangely so for a guy who's lost his wife. It's not endearing how fervently he chases her, it comes off as insensitive and you see the boy's point when he's saying that the dad's trying to move on too fast. It bothers me that they don't tell you how long ago that was.

As far as visuals go this is nice to look at. On mute it could possibly pass for a decent film, it's just the story that kills it. The premise was good until they decided to totally erase it with one stupid reveal. All of the characters are so naive and the choices they make are so unabashedly dumb that it's difficult to like any of them, really. They don't seem like normal people. The two children are the only ones with a shred of realism and they're secondary characters and, let's face it, only in the movie for sentimentality and "damsel in distress" value. I liked Cobie Smulders' performance and character, and I maintain belief that the story would be twenty times better if her character had a bigger role, or if the mother was still alive and they had to deal with that conflict as well as the silly fake murder one.

This is for you, Nicholas Sparks. 

For me, the things this film does wrong are unforgivable, no one with an ounce of critical thought could watch this without screaming at the screen a good few times or leaving altogether. Nicholas Sparks, I dislike you with a passion and the fact that you will continue to make money with your half-assed Shayamalan romance novels and films sickens me. I would not wish a viewing of this movie on anyone, I implore you not to see it. I'm gonna go watch Cloud Atlas again, I need some cheering up. Review of that (possibly to be multi-media) on the way.



Embrace the Madness.