TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1999

Movie fails to send message

By John Putnam

On-Line Forty-Niner

If Kevin Costner is looking for a vehicle to jump-start his moribund career, Warner Bros.' "Message In A Bottle," a tragedy-laden tale of doomed lovers, is probably not going to be it.

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MOVIE REVIEW

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Based upon the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, the film seeks to make a profound statement about self-denial and absorption with personal loss, but loses its way through excessive sentimentality and naive, simplistic dialogue.

Shot on the beautiful Maine coastline, the film, directed by Luis Mandoki with cinematography by Caleb Deschanel, utilizes its coastal setting to wrench symbolic imagery - which reinforces its characters' emotional flights.

Jogging on the beach, Theresa Osborne (beautifully played by Robin Wright Penn) discovers a bottle containing a typewritten letter addressed "Dear Catherine," buried in the sand.

Theresa shares the missive with her fawning colleagues at the Chicago Tribune, where she works as a researcher, and it becomes a cause célèbre after it is published, receiving boxes of responses from moved readers.

Determined to meet the poet who has captivated her imagination, the single Theresa tracks down the forlorn scribe living in a seaside community on a small island off the coast of North Carolina. Garret Blake (Costner), is slowly attempting to rebuild his simple life after his wife Catherine's death a few years past.

Disguising her true intentions, the pair tentatively fall in love, providing the film with its most awkward, painful moments.

The lover's tentative idyll comes to a premature end when Theresa returns to Chicago and her son, but the audience can be sure that a reunion will soon commence.

Garret, like a fish out of water, travels to Chicago, whereupon, after a lover's reunion, he discovers the true inspiration for their meeting. He abruptly cuts short his inland excursion, bolting out of Theresa's house in a storm of literal and figurative forebodence.

Here the film completely changes course, from a trite, painfully sentimental love affair to a wrenching conclusion.