Cinema Hype

Readers, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Something painful. So painful, in fact, that I believe my brain has been sabotaging me: I keep forgetting to post about it. I’m blocking it out.

I’m talking about the Nights in Rodanthe trailer.

I cannot claim to be a Nicholas Sparks fan. I’ve let the books pass me by; in terms of the movies, I was only semi-whelmed by The Notebook, and I think I’ve only seen half of A Walk to Remember. Mostly, the Sparks empire strikes me as a little condescending, a little unnecessary, and maybe less than totally healthy, considering how all of them end.

But doesn’t this one seem especially, almost deliberately, bad? Maybe it’s just the way the trailer’s cut, or maybe it’s just that brazen, but as soon as Richard Gere decides to eat in the kitchen (I’m telling you, this trailer haunts me), it all seems so embarrassing. There’s no pretense here: these characters have been brought to this inn for sex, and the audience will have paid $10 to be there for that. It doesn’t matter whether they thought about it that way or not—the trailer editors certainly did. It’s not that I mind the sex itself; it’s more the terms in which it’s couched that bother me: the wild horses galloping down the beach, the “what keeps you safe?”, the waves crashing on the shore, the pointedness of it all. It’s so euphemistic and so metaphorical and so directly targeted at the apparent desires of the stereotypical middle-aged woman—leaving the loveless marriage, coincidentally sharing awesome beachside inn with angsty hot man who just happens to be a sensitive lover and also brings on well-timed thunderstorms—that it feels like it’s based on some kind of poll. The pandering, it burns.

Maybe it’ll do well; maybe these really are the secret (or not-that-secret) desires of the average American woman, brought from the privacy of the page out into the open. Maybe I’m out of touch. I’m sure there are people out there who can’t wait for that storm scene. Maybe I should commend them on their candidness, or on finally getting that elusive formula right. Maybe I’ll do all of this…as soon as the syrup-induced nausea dies down.

Ugh.