Nicholas Sparks’s sappy novel is the basis for this cut-and-paste romantic diversion that stumbles with gratuitous flashback sequences and a dropped subplot involving its leading man Richard Gere.
Gere plays Paul a wealthy surgeon who spends a night at a picture-perfect beachfront hotel on the Outer Banks of North Carolina to meet with a litigious widower of a woman who died on Paul’s operating table due to a rare complication.
Much to Paul’s surprise, the recently separated Adrienne (played by Diane Lane) is the hotel’s one-man-staff-person for the hurricane-threatened weekend.
The terrible storm arrives and love blossoms between Paul and Adrienne before they are torn apart by his commitment to join his doctor son (James Franco) in a remote Mexican village to deliver health care to its impoverished locals.
"Nights in Rodanthe" is a passable tearjerker for aging women, but less so for the rest of us.
Rated PG-13. 97 mins.
