REVIEW: Book-turned-movie “Safe Haven” is a safe bet

Nicholas Sparks has gone and done it again — made me cry. His most recent novel turned movie, “Safe Haven,” offers up another 90-minute love story sure to make anyone’s life seem far less romantic and utterly boring.

Julianne Hough plays a woman who married too young and ended up in an abusive relationship. Hough runs away to a place where nobody knows her name and starts a new life when widower and father of two young children, Josh Duhamel, comes into the picture.

Hough is standoffish and not looking for love, but Duhamel can’t fight the urge to help out the new girl in town.

Hough begins working at a local restaurant and Duhamel owns a small convenience store in the small North Carolina town the movie is set in.

The two begin the typical romantic summer relationship every girl dreams of while Hough’s violent husband is still looking for her.

The movie moves at a nice pace as it flashes back and forth between the present and past, slowly giving the audience more and more information on Hough’s past while letting the magical love story unfold.

Duhamel has two young kids, a son and a daughter, left behind after his wife died of cancer. The daughter is bubbly and immediately loveable and builds a real connection with Hough from the get go, but the son is still missing his mother and has troubles with his father and his father’s relationship with Hough.

As the movie progresses, the four of them start to look just like a family. Of course this happiness is short lived when the fear Hough has been running from finds its way to her.

The end of the movie escalates quickly with drama, danger, guns and fire as Hough and Duhamel fight to save the people they love most.

After the fire is extinguished, literally, Hough and Duhamel are able to live out their lives together. The tears are flowing at this point of the movie, that is until one little bit of surprising information comes to light that makes anyone watching the movie wipe away their tears and wonder why Nicholas Sparks decided to put something like that into the movie. I’m not going to ruin the surprise, but it is one I have mixed feelings about.

All-in-all, “Safe Haven,” like any other Sparks’ book or movie, proved to be another love story that brings tears to the eyes.