Safe Haven

How long can writer Nicholas Sparks trade off his iconic blub-fest The Notebook?

A movie whose punch line is so delightfully absurd that even after you pretty much know what's coming you spit out your Pepsi anyway.

Keeping up with the movie's inane plot twists makes for a capricious good time, but an unimaginative denouement turns the whole thing into a fool's errand.

To this writer, it suggests one of those evasive US TV commercials for incontinence treatments or rheumatism therapies.

Unfortunately Hough is not really up to the part and Duhamel isn't much better than a nice-looking block of wood.

As ever with a Sparks story, the action takes place in a sugary vision of small-town America that does not correspond with the real world at any point.

However, despite some added bite to Sparks' traditional mix of beachside frolics and attracting opposites, there's just a sense of déjà vu about the whole enterprise...

Still has all the eye-rolling trademarks of a Nicholas Sparks production.

Josh Duhamel is smokin' hot, the love story is sweet, and it's all undeniably watchable.

The film has action sequences, though they are horridly done and severely disrupt the tone of a film with an already disrupted tone.