A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.
Safe Haven is a blandly ‘vanilla’ film; attractively shot in picturesque locations, peppered with recognizable if unexciting faces, and delivering a simplistic homily about love conquering all that only a teenage girl could love.
Sudsily romantic, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, and bound to be a hit.
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and Chocolat man Hallström is an old pro at navigating this kind of undemandingly dramatic yarn and does a pretty fine job with Sparks' story.
An oasis of niceness.
There's nothing in this latest Nicholas Sparks adaptation to recommend it, except, perhaps, its audaciously idiotic final twist.
Director Hallström (The Cider House Rules) has been an Oscar contender in the past. What a sad decline, trying to salvage something from pap like this.
This one even throws a bit of supernatural twaddle into the mix, as if it needed anything else to undermine its credibility.
There’s a good twist, the young leads are appealing and anyone who enjoys Sparks’ sincere storytelling will enjoy it, even though it’s overlong.
Even though I have had a grudging respect for Sparks's knack for ingenious popular fiction in the past, this latest gushing, smouldering love story is just too ridiculously cliched; his tropes are beginning to look a bit threadbare, and the massive twist at the end is outrageous – and not in a good way.
The blandest of the many romantic melodramas adapted from the novels of Nicholas Sparks.
An almost unendurably sentimental tale.
General release. Check local listings for show times.