Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

What do you do with a life out of tune, when your fingers are numb, your lips blue, and the world, like a bowl of Jello, swallows you whole?

Do you take up flags and march yourself out to beat your drum, loudly, across the face of the moon? Or do you relent, repent, retreat into the smallness of the everyday?

Garret, a repairer of ships, and Theresa, a researcher of newspaper articles, prefer the latter. Both have experienced terrible pain and both have chosen to shut down the parts of themselves that feel. Initially strangers, the two meet through a twist in (of) Theresa's work, and they fumble toward each other, sometimes pushing through their individual Jello worlds, sometimes succumbing to the numbness that engulfs them.

Robin Wright Penn, as Theresa, gives a very sincere performance as a woman out of sync with herself. She never appears to wallow in the situation written for her - a gaping trap into which many other actresses would fall. Penn brings a certain honest vulnerability to all of her roles - it is perhaps her greatest asset - and it is certainly an important component of her role here.

Paul Newman is typecast, as usual of late, as the irascible but lovable father (of Kevin Costner in this case) named Dodge and gives his expected solid performance. I wish he'd had more screen time - his part is very small - but there is one scene between Costner and him which reminds, quite forcibly, why Newman is still respected and still in demand.

Kevin Costner, as Garret, is only slightly annoying. I'm just one of those people who finds Costner pretty annoying on a fairly regular basis, but he manages to sublimate most of that for this film. Perhaps it is because he doesn't speak as much as in his other starring roles, but usually sits brooding and looking tense.

The soundtrack is appropriate, but nothing really stood out for me. The same could be said for the cinematography - we are treated to a few brief moments of lush footage but, on the whole, it's business as usual for Hollywood films.

The worst aspects of the film are its literary pretensions. The screenplay for Message in a Bottle is a adapted from a book of the same name and suffers somewhat in translation. It relies heavily on the original's constructed, evocative language and overblown romanticism. But what we'll accept, even admire, in a book (written on a page and heard only in the corridors of our own minds), we often find overbearing or silly on screen. So, some of the dialogue and voice-overs come off more maudlin than moving.

Unless, of course, you are also dealing with a life out of tune.

I have found that, when one is terribly depressed, the maudlin can become cathartic. Like putting on Billy Holiday or Nina Simone to help bring forth the tears you can't quite reach on your own, this film - if you are in the right frame of mind - will get into your head and let you feel whatever you've been holding at bay.

I wouldn't recommend Message in a Bottle for most occasions. But if your life has gone out of tune, if your fingers are numb and your lips blue from an extended visit in your own Jello world, then this just might be the movie for you. Watch it on a rainy afternoon, curled on the couch with some good chocolate nearby - that's when you'll appreciate it the most.



Director: Luis Mandoki
Starring: Robin Wright Penn, Kevin Costner
With: Paul Newman, Robbie Coltrane (of English Cracker fame, in a small but nice turn)
Screenplay: Gerald DiPego
DVD Features: Feature-length audio commentary, deleted scenes with commentary, Five "hidden" documentary special FX segments

Recommended: No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older