Romantic comedy Blast from the Past an enjoyable film for the ages

Starring: Kevin Costner, Robin Wright Penn and Paul Newman
MPAA rating: R 
Running time: 131 min.
Our rating: *** (of five)

Our view: Despite his recent flops, Costner shines in this romantic drama, renewing his status as one of Hollywood's elite.

By Jesse Lauritz
Daily Cougar Staff

Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a great romantic movie for all you lovebirds out there.

Message in a Bottle, based on Nicholas Spark's New York Times bestseller The Notebook, is a romantic tale about a divorcee who falls in love with a man whom she hasn't met.

Theresa Osborne (Robin Wright Penn) is a hard-working researcher at the Chicago Tribune. Instead of dwelling on her divorce, she occupies herself with caring for her son, Jason.

But change is in the air from the beginning of the film. Theresa takes a vacation while Jason is away with his father. As she jogs down an empty beach, she stumbles across a bottle wedged in the sand.

Inside the bottle is a very passionate letter signed only with the initial "G." After reading the letter, Theresa becomes so enthralled by its content that she shares it with everyone in her office. Her colleagues find Theresa's infatuation with the letter so interesting that one of them goes so far as to run an article about it.

This prompts Theresa to take a risk: She decides to search for the author of the letter. The wild goose chase leads her to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where she finds a sailboat builder named Garret Blake (Kevin Costner).

Garret has been grieving over the death of his wife, Catherine, for two years and has isolated himself from the rest of the world.

But Dodge Blake (Paul Newman), Garret's father, tries to keep the widower linked to society. Dodge shows his son that everyone gets hurt at least once in life.

Also, he tells Garret that he doesn't have to stay in seclusion for the rest of his life because of something that happened in the past.

Because of his recent film failures, any new Kevin Costner movie is usually deemed a flop before it arrives.

After gaining recognition for his Academy Award-winning movie Dances With Wolves, everything went downhill.

Waterworld, one of the most expensive films ever made, dove at the box office. How badly? Imagine the fallout if James Cameron's Titantic had tanked.

The Postman, which was anticipated to be one of the best films of late 1997, also bombed in theaters. Maybe it has to do with the length of his films, which have earned a reputation of being long and drawn out.

Please don't let this discourage you from going to see Message in a Bottle. Costner certainly deserves some praise for his role in this film. He shows us, once again, his ability to be the truly great actor he once was.

Directed by Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman) and produced by Denise Di Novi, Jim Wilson and Costner, this film certainly deserves praise as one of the most romantic movies of 1999.

A story about fate and love, Message in a Bottle delivers an S.O.S. telling us that it takes enormous courage to love after loss.