From All Movie Guide: In her classic tome From Reverence to Rape, longtime Village Voice critic Molly Haskell reflects on the deliberate way in which many films of classic Hollywood gave greater contours to the dramatic outlines of our daily lives and emotional experiences, creating a heightened artificiality -- an emotional magnification that many viewers naturally warmed to as a product of self-identification or, more commonly, self-aspiration. In this context, glossy depictions of romantic love naturally took first place by default.

Those observations come to mind while watching Nights in Rodanthe, an unabashedly contrived, but not entirely unsuccessful Hollywood romance from director George C. Wolfe, scripted by John Romano and Ann Peacock, and adapted from the best-seller by Nicholas Sparks. Diane Lane stars as Adrienne Willis, a divorcée-to-be raising her two kids (a soft-spoken, bespectacled little boy, and a rebellious teenage daughter decked out in "alternative" apparel and a tattoo) after he...

more