NIGHTS IN RODANTHE - schmaltz - top quality - but schmaltz all the same

Unmitigated, manipulative schmaltz. An emotioanally repressed surgeon and a voluble divorcee fall in love on a stormy night in a ludicrously post-card perfect beach-front hotel. They are prevented from making a new and idyllic life together by a lazy plot point that seems a little sadistic and random. There's no prickly emotional drama (as in AS GOOD AS IT GETS). The emotional transformations are a little too pat. I detest this sort of melodramatic bilge, even when, as in this case, it's actually pretty well acted by Richard Gere and Diane Lane in the main roles and Scott Glen and James Franco in support. Real weepies make you cry uncontrollably because you're wrapped up in the story- rather than tugging self-consciously on your heart-strings.

NIGHTS IN RODANTHE is on release in the US, Brazil, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Iceland and the UK. It opens next weekend in Germany, Russia, Singapore and Austria. It opens on October 24th in the Philippines, Norway and Spain. It opens on November 6th in Australia; on November 13th in Egypt, the Netherlands and Portugal and on November 28th in Venezuela.