There is a famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that states "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." I believe that filmmakers have adapted that line of thinking into "If you make a better love story, people will beat a path into the theater". The attempts at romantic movies in the past year have ranged from incredible (Shakespeare in Love), to intense (Out of Sight), to downright silly (Avengers, Godzilla, Armageddon). Message in A Bottle falls somewhat below good, but way above being silly. It works for the most part, but just seems to beleaguer a point that is inevitable.

When I sat down in the theater, I thought I knew pretty much where this movie was going. Luis Mandoki has tapped romance writer Nicholas Sparks’ novel for this story, and on the surface, it seemed to follow the Screenwriter 101 version of a sappy romance. Penn is a single mother, searching for affection, who finds a bottle with a message professing romance and love. Through a sequence of coincidence/research, she tracks down the author (Costner) who is a lonely man with love in his heart, but still pining his "one and only", who is out of his life now. I’m not sure if the tracking techniques utilized here are truly possible, if so, big brother is a lot closer than we think. From that point, you can see what is going to happen. You know they’re going to meet, the spark will be there, and each will struggle with the past, and then fall in love. The true nature of the meeting will come out, followed by the subsequent anger/separation scenes, closely followed by the realization scenes, where the past is finally dealt with, and the future is accepted, happily ever after ensues. It follows each of these laboriously, but still effectively. As the ending approaches though, the story takes an unexpected, but surprising twist. The movie made no bones about shamelessly manipulating your feelings and emotion. This has caught a lot of fans off guard, and angered some other critics I’ve read. Although it may not have been consistent with the rest of the movie, I admire the guts it took to do this ending. Whether it was in the book or Mandoki decided to embellish, I don’t know.

My problems with this movie don’t come from the ending, but rather, how it got there, and how long it took. I understand that romance is not something to be rushed, especially when you only have about 2 hours to develop, what takes much longer in reality. But this one still seems to take forever. The inevitable was obvious to me, and seemingly to the characters, a long time before it actually happened. I found myself coaxing the screen going "C’mon, get on with it already"

Costner is at his charming and romantic best, with that look and voice that draws gasps and swoons from female fans. Penn really matures into a serious lead actress in this role. But the sheer joy of this movie comes from the performance of Newman as Costner’s curmudgeonly wise father. He was sheer perfection in every scene, playing them with acerbic glee. He has the feisty old codger down to a T. He puts so much heart and emotion in this role that you wonder if this is the man that Newman’s children see. He was sheer perfection in every scene, playing them with acerbic glee. If this wasn’t February (and we know Oscar voters can’t remember this far back), I’d say this performance is definitely Oscar nomination material. This movie is at times charming and annoying. The romance, slow to develop, has a certain appeal that cannot be denied. This is due mainly to the chemistry of Costner and Penn. But the love story takes so long to unfold that after awhile I just lost interest, as the characters seemingly do.