Message in a Bottle

By Sam Adams

Directed by Luis Mandoki
A Warner Bros. release

It seems like years since the last Kevin Costner movie—and what good years they've been. Costner's nasal surfer drawl wore out its welcome long ago, but somehow he's managed to keep his career going despite the money-sucking failures of Waterworld and The Postman, either of which would have left most actors hawking haircare products on late-night TV. Costner's seems to be the Career That Wouldn't Die—which makes sense, considering he's an actor with the emotional range of a zombie.

At least in Message in a Bottle, Costner's been demoted a bit; he's clearly got the star role, but by screen time at least, he takes second billing to Robin Wright Penn. She plays Theresa Osborne, a recently divorced researcher at a Chicago newspaper whose life reeks of caution in every respect; she dresses conservatively, turns down her boss' efforts to get her to try writing for the paper and hasn't dated since she and her husband split up. She is, in other words, exactly like the heroine of just about every romance novel known to woman.

Like all good heroines, Theresa is waiting for something to come and wake her out of her slumber—only she doesn't know what she's waiting for. Enter the titular plot contrivance: While on vacation at "the Cape," Theresa finds a bottle on the beach with, yes, a message inside. Written as a note from an unknown sailor to his dead wife, it tells of his undying love through a series of awkward nautical metaphors—"you were my true north," etc.—and instantly enraptures our fast-talking newspaper gal. After her boss (Robbie Coltrane) prints the letter in his column, hundreds of women are similarly smitten, and Theresa manages to convince him to send her off to look for the mystery man. Enter Costner.

As Garret Blake, a North Carolina fisherman who has never been off the coast, Costner wears a distracted expression which is no doubt supposed to indicate extreme grief, but he really just looks as if he's forgotten something he's trying hard to remember (his lines?). Nonetheless, Theresa falls instantly for his flannel-shirted, rubber-trousered self, and the rest should be obvious to anyone who's heard the plot of The Horse Whisperer. She discovers a whole new world, he's still in love with a dead woman; she has a life in Chicago, he's married to the sea.

Not even the presence of Paul Newman as Garret's crusty father, Dodge, can lift Message in a Bottle out of the murk; it just makes you wonder what Newman is doing in this fluff. (To be fair, he's not all there; he phoned this one in long-distance.) Director Luis Mandoki (rhymes with "hokey") has a certain bland professionalism, and in a sense Message succeeds on its own terms, but it's always easy to meet your goals if you set them low enough. Wright Penn, whose face alone would be reason to see some movies, has shown herself to be too complicated an actress for roles this undemanding; I know she was the Princess Bride at one point, but after seeing her magnificent turn in She's So Lovely, it's hard to accept her as a woman whose problems don't run any deeper than an ex-husband and an unsatisfying job.

Costner, on the other hand, is perfect for his role, in the sense that he's no better than the part demands. And strictly on a sappy romance level, Message in a Bottle is actually better than the over-fêted Shakespeare in Love, not least because Costner is laid-back and affable where Joseph Fiennes is arrogant and fake-intense. In a way, it's a relief to see Costner try something this unambitious, a movie that requires him to underplay (in truth, the only way he can play). Costner's been failing up for a long time. He should try succeeding down more often.