The only other form "Safe Haven" has taken is a
movie. Here is a quick review of it by Lancy Downs.
“Safe Haven” is the latest film adaptation of a Nicholas
Sparks book — and its refusal to stay within the predictable outline
established by previous adaptations is its undoing.
Like nearly every other Sparks adaptation, “Safe Haven” is
the story of a romance that blossoms in a small North Carolina town. Katie
(Julianne Hough) flees from Boston after an ambiguous, bloody conflict in her
home, the details of which are slowly doled out through the course of the
movie. Detective Kevin Tierney (David Lyons) aggressively begins a search for
her, but Katie escapes on a bus to Southport, North Carolina, where she is
introduced to handsome, helpful single dad Alex Wheatley (Josh Duhamel), who
runs the local convenience store.
Katie settles into life in Southport: she gets a waitressing
job, rents a cabin nestled in the woods, makes friends with her oddly curious
neighbor Jo (Cobie Smulders) and continues to attract the attention of Alex and
his children. “Safe Haven” is at least aware of its own predictability here. It
goes through the motions of establishing tension between Alex and Katie but
does so only half−heartedly. She initially rejects his offers of a ride home or
a gift of a bicycle, but soon she is accompanying his family on a trip to the
beach and spending days on romantic boat rides with Alex.
It’s these scenes that are particularly unoriginal — many of
them, it seems, are directly taken from the most notorious and well−known
Sparks adaptation, “The Notebook” (2004). Alex and Katie frolic at the beach,
get caught in the rain and take row boats to secluded ponds while the camera
lingers lovingly on the two photogenic stars, both of whom spend a significant
portion of their time on−screen pensively staring out at the ocean and looking
attractive. The love story itself is standard fare — but at least the
filmmakers know it. They lavish this plotline with the expected corniness and
attempts at profundity (for example: Alex’s dead wife wrote letters to her
children to be opened at different milestones in their lives). It may be
predictable, but at least it is predictability done right.
Where “Safe Haven” goes truly wrong is in its desire to not
just be a sappy, predictable romantic drama. It insists on being part thriller
too — and this only gives the film an off−balance, nonsensical feel. While Alex
and Katie are falling in love in North Carolina, Tierney, the unhinged and
alcoholic Boston detective, is looking into Katie’s disappearance with
increasing aggression and lunacy. He is working against his boss’s orders to
drop the case. He breaks into houses, sends out “wanted” posters and gets drunk
at the home from which Katie has fled. As we see flashbacks that reveal what
happened the night Katie left Boston and learn the nature of her relationship
with Tierney, his search intensifies and ultimately culminates in his drunken
drive down to Southport to find her. The frenetic pace of this plotline coupled
with Tierney’s obvious derangement simply does not work with the film’s love
story. “Safe Haven” should have stuck with the romantic drama formula so many
previous Sparks films have successfully abided by. Alone, neither plot is
strong enough to carry the entire movie, but their intertwining only gives the
film a disjointed tone.
These two storylines converge in an overly dramatic finale
where Katie and Alex must protect themselves and his children from the reckless
danger of Tierney when he arrives in Southport, drunk and crazed on the Fourth
of July. Still, this poor execution pales in comparison to the romance−thriller
hybrid’s plot twist in the film’s final minutes. It’s the kind of twist that is
entirely campy and ridiculous, the kind that elicits groans and exasperated
sighs from an audience. It is left unexplained and unresolved within the
context of the movie itself — one final frustration before the credits roll.
“Safe Haven” had potential to stay within the generic
parameters of a Nicholas Sparks movie. It’s far from award−worthy, but a
romance that will at least make impressionable teenage girls swoon. But the bizarre
blend of thriller and romance does this film no favors — nor does the twist it
so ungraciously delivers. Perhaps the next Sparks adaptation will wisely stick
to the expected fluff of a Valentine’s−Day romance.
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