# Message in a Bottle (1999)

### reviewed by
Craig Roush

    MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

    ** 1/2 (out of 4) - an enjoyable movie

Release Date: February 12, 1999 Starring: Robin Wright Penn, Kevin Costner, Paul Newman, Robbie Coltrane, Jesse James Directed by: Luis Mandoki Distributed by: Warner Brothers MPAA Rating: PG-13 (a scene of sexuality) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1999/message.htm

    Star power is a tricky thing.

In some respects it can count for a lot -- the classic example is Jim Carrey, otherwise known as the Twenty Million Dollar Man -- and in other respects it can count for very little. AT FIRST SIGHT, a recent romantic release, dropped off the Top Ten charts only three weeks after debuting despite trumpeting the names of Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino. Eventually, that may be the case for the latest drama from WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN director Luis Mandoki, but it's clear initially that MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE is drawing a tidy sum from its leading names.

Those leading names are Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn, and Paul Newman, and each has something to offer this romantic tale of love under precarious circumstances. Costner has it all backwards, making something out of nothing and nothing out of something, but by this point in his career he's mastered the art and we've come to expect it from him. Robin Wright Penn, of FORREST GUMP notoriety, even manages to make Costner's frequent missteps look charming, and together the two create quite a screen presence. Newman lends comic relief in fine form, giving a much more memorable performance than his last outing in the crime drama TWILIGHT.

Here, Costner plays sea dog and widower Garret Blake, a sailboat expert who lost his wife several years ago and now writes bottled romantic epistles to her. Jogging along the beach one day while on vacation, divorced newspaper researcher Theresa Osborne finds one of these messages and takes it back to Chicago to check it out. Using professional connections and doing some tidy sleuth work on her own, she tracks the messages back to Garret and smoothly works her way into a love affair with the man. The two share a common feeling of neglect, and share their love by throwing marshmallows at each other before snuggling up by a fire on the beach. All of this is very romantic, except for the fact that Theresa's secret of how she found Garret threatens to tip the balance.

The movie plays out like THE HORSE WHISPERER Lite, with all of the grand cinematography of Big Sky country replaced by cramped silhouettes of sailboats on the Carolina coast at dusk. Gone is the silent brooding of the Robert Redford film, and instead we get Robin Wright Penn and Kevin Costner doing voice-overs that lack all emotion but will still manage evince a tear in every woman's eye. The red-blooded American males in the audience will appreciate the movie's lone fight scene, in which a disgruntled Costner suplexes his opponent on a diner table before being told by the assembled crowd, "It's not worth it, Garret."

Truth be told, the movie does manage to play itself out fairly efficiently, and its 145-minute running time hardly seems that long. The drama is solid, providing metaphors for Garret's maturity with his personal project of constructing a sailboat. When the sequences begin to scrape the bottom, Paul Newman enters with a witty line and a twinkle in his eye. There's not a specific flaw to be found, other than the movie's refusal to break from tradition and its seamless devotion to the predictable. The ending does not come as a surprise, and encapsulates the whole affair with startling precision. On the whole, this isn't a light and breezy romantic comedy but a moody drama which will have those leaving the theater feeling disenfranchised. But it just might be worth it, anyway.

    all contents © 1999 Craig Roush

    --
    Craig Roush
    kinnopio@execpc.com
    --
    Kinnopio's Movie Reviews
    http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews