Do Diane Lane and Richard Gere look great together on screen? Yes! Does their new film, Nights in Rodanthe, make you “want to fall in love all over again,” as Stephen Colbert teases? Many incurable romantics will probably answer in the affirmative. But is it an entertaining movie? Not so much, unfortunately.  

Based on a popular novel by Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) and directed by George C. Wolfe (Lackawanna Blues), Nights in Rodanthe relates the tale of what happens when an unhappy woman, who has volunteered to take care of her friend’s inn for a weekend, meets the handsome but distraught guest staying there for those same two days and nights.      

Despite the chemistry between its co-stars and the movie’s lush coastline scenery, Nights in Rodanthe serves up too much manipulated sentimentality for my taste, even though I admit being incurably romantic most of the time. It depicts a “Great Love” springing up full-blown between two mature people after only one weekend together -- and that’s a bit farfetched in the real world. Granted, surviving a hurricane while being the only people in a bed-and-breakfast inn during that fateful weekend makes things more dramatic and memorable. Still, the strong emotional ties remaining after the storm seem unreal here. And, sadly, events leading up to the storm and what happens after the man and woman leave the inn pale in significance to that “dark and stormy night.” 

Lane and Gere work hard to bring some credibility to their characters. Playing Adrienne, a stressed-out mother of two who’s estranged from her philandering husband (Christopher Meloni), Lane excels at showing how hard it is for Adrienne to deal with all the day-to-day challenges facing her. And she does a great job transforming Adrienne into an entirely different woman after falling in love with Paul (Gere). As a divorced doctor suffering guilt over a surgery gone wrong, Gere also succeeds in projecting important changes in the doctor’s personality as a result of his love for Adrienne.

Because Gere and Lane share such terrific on-screen rapport (especially during one sizzling love sequence), I wish Nights in Rodanthe had taken full advantage of that fact by shortening their character’s letter-writing romance and including more scenes of them together. Always the eternal optimist, I’m betting the Lane/Gere pairing (also seen in Unfaithful) will get the chance to shine in another -- and better -- romantic movie sometime in the future.    

(Released by DreamWorks and rated “PG-13” for some sexuality.)