Safe Haven Reviews
Top CriticKeeping up with the movie's inane plot twists makes for a capricious good time, but an unimaginative denouement turns the whole thing into a fool's errand.
[The] final reel ... descends into the Vortex of Bonkers, delivering fits of unexpected laughter.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Plods along with dialogue just above the level of crayon scribblings, and the direction by the usually reliable Lasse Hallström is dismayingly sluggish.
It's as though the filmmakers lacked the confidence to stick with the basic story, which served every element needed in a Sparks-infused guilty pleasure.
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| Original Score: C+
On its own merits, Safe Haven is about as satisfying and filling as a Valentine's Day conversation heart, with far less to say.
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| Original Score: 1.5/5
The latest Nicholas Sparks-derived weepfest, Safe Haven, is being marketed as a Valentine's Day special, but the plot line is closer to a stalker thriller. It's sudsy-scary. It's also not very good.
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| Original Score: C+
Hough doesn't stand a chance against shoddy pacing, horrific editing, and plot direction disastrous enough to make your toes curl.
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| Original Score: D
Hough emits all the charisma of a personal assistant ...
I hate Safe Haven. It's a terrible thing to do to your Valentine.
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| Original Score: 0/4
Why make a movie when making a Hallmark-card-with-dialogue is so much less risky?
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Apologies to Hallstrom, but an adaptation of a Sparks novel always ends up being a Sparks movie.
Lasse Hallstrom's new film does exactly what an adaptation should: It turns the original material's greatest flaws into assets.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
The problem with the romantic "Safe Haven" isn't that it plays it safe, but that it plays it cheap. It's also about 10 minutes too long. And there's a final twist that, well, if you have any popcorn left by the scene, you'll want to throw it at the screen.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Like its equally weepy predecessors, it's a pretty-looking, wonderfully facile bit of emotional froth that's likely to clean up at the box office.
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| Original Score: 2/4
"Safe Haven" is one of those Valentine's Day confections that satisfy your sweet tooth until you get to their weird, off-putting center.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
The best thing that can be said about "Safe Haven" is there is a cute romance in there somewhere.
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| Original Score: C-
A cinematic valentine you'll be reasonably content to watch on a flight in a year or so.
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| Original Score: 2/4
This is such stuff as paperback-rack and February multiplex dreams are made on.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Long on beauty shots, short on depth and seriously intent on tugging your heartstrings. Indeed, it demands you reach for those tissues. Sob.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Safe Haven may not be the most dangerous place to spend Valentine's Day - but it's hardly a worthwhile romantic choice.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The problem is that most of the pieces to the shoddy puzzle ultimately don't fit, making things less believable and successful.
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| Original Score: 2/5
"Safe Haven" is passably engaging and almost works as a proper thriller. Then -- wham! Sparks throws that schmaltz pie right in your kisser.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The climactic inferno, which explodes whatever credibility the movie built up, is immediately followed by a cheap, out-of-the-blue supernatural twist. The equivalent of a forged signature, it attests to the movie's essential falsity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Safe Haven offers an unsurprising but not unsatisfying tour through recognizable Sparkville terrain.
Routine romantic thriller lacks acting and directing flair.
The Nicholas Sparks universe finally gets the crime thriller it deserves, an erratic amalgam of mush and mystery, with an 11th-hour dose of supernatural visitation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Hallström's understated approach clashes with the blunt-force drama of the Sparks story line, which is definitely a matter of taste.
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| Original Score: 2/4
"Safe Haven" plays out less like a love story than it does a two-hour audition tape Julianne Hough commissioned to land a lucrative lip-gloss-modeling contract.
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| Original Score: 2/5
A movie that passably ambles along in generic-melodrama mode before finally insulting audience intelligence one time too many.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
It's trash - entertaining and escapist, perhaps - but trash nonetheless.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Another Nicholas Sparks-penned romantic potboiler about commitment-shy, G-rated lovers who find romance, overcoming dark secrets and unhappy pasts.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Very little in this movie makes any sense, even as glossy Valentine's Day fare.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Either the filmmakers were out of their minds, or they must think we're out of our minds to buy into this schmaltz.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
