I agree with the review that said we were not given a chance to invest in the characters. I actually cringed when they first kissed. It just didn't fit. The letters didn't make since. He barely knew her yet discribing her character. Wasn't moved at all.

There's something about movies with bratty teenagers that will always ruin a film for me. Without the teenagers, this movie reminded me so much of a cross between "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (the latter more than the first). But the bratty daughter who was super disrespectful to her mother over a divorce reminded me too much of "The Descendants," another movie with kids that need to be disciplined and talk to their parents any kind of way. Without the brat, I may have enjoyed this movie more. I watched the movie because I love Richard Gere, but what's interesting is I never believed the chemistry between him and Diane Lane's character (Adrienne Willis) when he was a stranger at a North Carolina inn. I wasn't even interested in the widowed husband. But once they separated and started writing, the plot picked up tremendously. Problem is that was almost the end of the movie. The last 20 minutes or so are five stars. The rest? Nothing to brag about.

To see Richard Gere in another romantic drama and still finding myself questioning what he is doing there is, to say the least, vexing. But in this case, he just about gets it right. On the other hand, Diane Lane gets it very right.Recently separated from her husband having discovered an affair Lane has been focusing on what she feels is her most important role; that of a mother. Lane is asked to house-sit a bed and breakfast for her friend, Jean, down on the North Carolina coast. Seeing this as an opportunity to get away from it all and to contemplate getting back with her husband for the sake of her children, Lane's character, Adrienne jumps at the offer. While house-sitting, she looks after the one guest who has paid double the fee and at off-peak times. As Jean's Grandmother says, "Count your blessings and keep on stepping". Richard Gere is still rather wooden as Dr. Paul Flanner, but the pain and regret is a lot more believable from him in this movie. As he has gotten older, he looks more genuinely like an old man who has looked back on his life and regrets decisions that he has made. It works better at the age of fifty- eight and thus, makes him a better fit in this sort of role than before. But Diane Lane is simply beautiful in this. Toned brilliantly as she rediscovers the pieces of her life that she had deserted, to say that she becomes a new woman in Gere's arms would not be as accurate as to say that rediscovers who she is. This metamorphosis is clear and visible in her character rather than a token gesture and half-hearted as is seen in other movies of this type. There are a few issues with this movie, however. The main one is the pace. For the pace to work, the relationship between Gere and Lane had to be sped up to the point that credibility was strained, but not broken. Also, while I accept that a fourteen year old girl "knows stuff", the way that she suddenly becomes her mother's rock is, again, a strain on credulity, especially when she says to her father that she loves him even though she later states that she knows of the affairs he had by that time.However, the theme of the redemption and the self-forgiveness that both Gere and Lane engage in works very well as do the scenery and vibes of the movie. Hitchcock it is not. However, compelling it is.

"Nights in Rodanthe" pretty much sticks faithfully to the outlined pattern in all of Nicholas Sparks' material... Every work of his to have been adapted for the screen so far seems to involve at least one character central to the plot who is dead, dying, deteriorating or in peril of death... It seems like a cheap way of inducing emotion to attempt to make the audience (I hate to be sexist, but let's face it, mostly women... ) cry buckets in some kind of communal catharsis until he's pumped out some more characters who will slot into the same formula...The crime of it here is that both Gere and Lane actually managed to rise above the predictability of the genre and make these people interesting characters, but it's a wasted effort, because the author is only interested in having them be ciphers to provoke universal drama... Touching on death as a subject is okay, but consistently resorting to killing or wrecking your principal players as a climax is uninspired, in the extreme.If you're looking for a weepy to bring tears on cue, without making you feel like you've been on a journey that has an ounce of flexibility to it, this is the one - but shouldn't art have a kind of vitality to it; an internal emotion driving things that doesn't feel like a mere process? I despair at 'Pavlov's Dog Syndrome'... That is for things without nuance, and I happen to be someone who believes that movies shouldn't belong in that category anymore... Have we come no further since the inception of the medium?