Safe Haven

Tiptoeing its way into UK theatres a whole fortnight too late (apparently it was scared off the coveted Valentine’s Day slot by “A Good Day to Die Hard”), “Safe Haven” is a Nicholas Sparks adaptation like any other. Based on his bestselling 2008 weepy of the same name, it marks the eighth occasion on which a Sparks novel has made the leap from page to big-screen — a near-annual tradition sparked in 1999 with the Kevin Costner/Robin Wright romance “Message in a Bottle" — and, coming fresh off the assembly line, it proudly ticks all the expected boxes: a mawkish story of love against the odds, it’s up to its neck in maudlin melodrama, drenched in heart-wrenching tragedy, soundtracked by soothing acoustic strums and, as it’s set against the glowing backdrop of blinding sunsets, is exceedingly well lit.

So closely does it stick to the Sparks movie formula that it almost descends into self-parody, as if director Lasse Hallström (once Oscar-nominated for “The Cider House Rules”) is slyly mocking the niche with which Sparks has made his name — if only there were oppressive, disapproving parents integrated into the plot, then it would be a full house of the author’s hackneyed clichés. Even the poster, in which our two leading lovebirds cling to each other’s faces in a passionate embrace, is almost entirely identical to that of “The Lucky One,” the last Sparks adaptation, released last April. That one boasted the smouldering good looks of Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling. This one boasts Julianne Hough (“Footloose”) and Josh Duhamel (“Transformers”), two impossibly attractive actors who appear to be doing this as an advised career move rather than as a passion project — hey, “The Notebook” worked wonders for a certain Mr Gosling.

She is Katie, a big-city runaway who flees to the sleepy coastal town of Southport, North Carolina to escape her troubled past and start afresh. He is Alex, the local hunk and father-of-two who manages a convenience store and whose wife has conveniently died of cancer (another Sparks trope — incurably diseased loved ones). After Katie gets a job waitressing at the local fish house and rents a creaky cabin in the woods (the sight of which made me think I’d really rather be watching “The Evil Dead"), romance blossoms between the pair as they take long walks on the beach together, take a ride in a canoe and get caught in the rain — as bland as it sounds, and is, Hough and Duhamel do admittedly share a warm chemistry.

Livening up proceedings is a parallel plot involving Kevin (David Lyons, “Revolution"), a slimy cop who, in the film’s opening, pursues a petrified Katie before she sneaks onto a bus out of Boston. For reasons initially unknown, this boozing law enforcer is hell-bent on tracking Katie down, a task which sees him — in a bizarre, career-torching move — mocking up posters falsely claiming that she is wanted for first-degree murder. This gives the film the status of a stalker thriller very much in the vein of “Sleeping with the Enemy,” and is damn near the only thing in the film that is remotely interesting, if only for the logic-stretching absurdity of Kevin’s boundless obsession.

Well, that is until the final few minutes, during which an eye-popping revelation about a seemingly trivial supporting character is sure to inspire both howls of laughter and exclamations of bewilderment from confounded audience members who didn’t predict it the minute said character appears on-screen. I shan’t detail much other than to say that it is a bonkers, hilariously misjudged plot twist that is completely out of place with the rest of the film, altering its tone, mutating its genre and bending its reality, as well as bafflingly paying tribute to the works of M. Night Shyamalan — you’ll see. The best Sparks adaptation remains the engaging “The Notebook,” which is hailed by many to be a modern classic of its genre. “Safe Haven,” while perfectly harmless, is just another in a long line of dead-eyed imitations.

4/10