Monday, January 7, 2013

Safe Haven

I spent all day yesterday reading my Target paperback copy of Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. I fell in love with the characters and loved the storyline. Sparks is genius when it comes to character development and character connections. What I mean by that is every novel of his I have read, I feel like I know the characters. Critics say that his storylines are much the same, which to be honest I would agree that they are. But even though they follow the same sequence, Sparks introduces such heart behind his characters that most women don't care. The characters are always so raw and exposed that you find yourself forgetting that it's the same sequence with different events. Like I said, this story was no different.

                                                                             

When I finished the book I was so excited to watch the trailer for the movie that is hitting theaters on Valentine's day. I am not huge fans of Hough or Duhamel, but I was picturing them both in my head while I was reading so I grew accustomed to the idea of them fulfilling the roles. However, I was severely disappointed, I would even go as far to say crestfallen watching the trailer. It's clear that even the most obvious things that should have been kept true to the book have not been. I don't know how many of you know the story or have read the book but Katie is a 27 year old woman who shows up in a North Carolina town with a secret. Upon meeting a friend, Jo, she starts to come to terms with her terrifying past and her crazy husband who is still looking for her. Julianne Hough recently revealed that she was abused while in school growing up, so filming this movie was hard and eventually therapeutic for her. The book is great, but I would hate to see all of it tarnished by a sub-par film.

Then again, this is not the first time that we have seen this happen with a Nicholas Spark's book turned into a movie. Last year his blockbuster The Lucky One got similar reviews, that too much of the original storyline and character development had been changed. I agreed and even though the movie was good, I was still left feeling half empty because the character development was so poor. I fear the same for this film. I will still be seeing it and of course I will give you my full review.

My overarching annoyance isn't that this movie will be bad; it's annoyance on behalf of this happening to almost every movie that his books are based on. When you look at his track record as an author he is an ace at writing stories that get turned into movie contracts. In his career Sparks has written a total of 18 books and of those 8 have been made into motion pictures. Now I can't speak for some of the books because I have only seen the movies but Dear John, The Lucky One, Nights in Rodanthe and The Last Song were all very different as the movie version. Sparks claims that he has a lot of involvement in his films and that subtle changes are okay as long as the major storyline is not attacked. To that I have two counterpoints. Number one: in this film it looks as though as huge chunk of the major storyline is altered, so that's a mistake. Secondly, if the minor elements are altered enough, the story starts to take on a different look. I know that fans are always disappointed when the films comes around, but then again we all keep buying the tickets when the new films comes out. So I guess Sparks is doing something right :) 

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