A Guy Who Really Floats Her Boat

0.cached.png

By Newsweek Editors

See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.

THE SUCCESS OF ""Titanic'' must've gotten Kevin Costner's goat. The erstwhile idol has bounced back with Message in a Bottle, his version of a ship-bound romance. Costner plays Garret Blake, a North Carolina boatbuilder so busted up over the death of his saintly wife that he writes her letters, corks them and tosses them into the sea. Robin Wright Penn is a lovelorn Chicago reporter who finds one of his unsigned missives washed up on a beach and gets obsessed. She tracks him down (ID the typewriter! send the cork to a lab!), shows up on his dock and falls hard.

""Message in a Bottle'' has its dumb points: too many shots of churning surf and lovers nestled in beach blankets, not to mention the premise that women find incommunicative, hulking shells like Blake the height of irresistibility. But it gets you. Wright Penn is luminous in a trench coat and sneakers. Paul Newman, as Costner's crotchety dad, gets the best lines. ""That's a mistake, letting her taste your coffee,'' he offers, as Costner packs a boating picnic. Hey, Paul, it's not his coffee that she's after.

Read More on News