Message in a Bottle . Tucson Weekly . 02-15-99

Message in a Bottle

DIRECTED BY: Luis Mandoki

REVIEWED: 02-15-99

The whole time I was watching How Stella Got Her Groove Back, I kept wondering what the film would be like if Stella were actually a squishy, bland middle-aged white guy being stalked by someone half his age rather than a buff, in-her-prime black woman pursuing a younger man. Well, here's the two-plus-hours-long answer. It would be like watching a Candida Royale porn film: painfully slow paced, enveloped in soft lighting, and with the overwhelming presence of every woman's worst nightmare--the self-proclaimed Sensitive Male. Kevin Costner plays the monster in question, a widower named Garret who wrote some messages to his dead wife and then put them in bottles. The much younger Theresa (Robin Wright Penn), a researcher for the Chicago Tribune, finds one of his letters on a slow news day and locates him in a small town in North Carolina. She teaches him how to love again, and, unfortunately for us, Garret likes the slow jams and subjects us to an embarrassingly stupid sex scene. Paul Newman gives a good show as Garret's grumpy father, and Illeana Douglas is ever-charming, if wasted in her usual wacky sidekick role. Aside from them, it's one drawn-out, wish-Fabio-were-here scene after the next. Take your hankies, ladies, because you'll need something to wipe up the mess after this pukefest.

--Higgins

Capsule Reviews
Message in a Bottle

Film Vault Suggested Links
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
High Art
Oscar and Lucinda

Rate this Film
If you don't want to vote on a film yet, and would like to know how others voted, leave the rating selection as "Vote Here" and then click the Cast Vote button.