Nicholas Sparks' Safe Haven: A Man's Review

When you go to watch a Nicholas Sparks movie, your own real question is, "At what point in the story does someone die?"

Well, as a man, the question most on your mind is, "How do I get out of here?" But, you love your significant other, so you'll endure the intense searing pain for the moment and contemplate your own mortality along with the mortality of Sparks' characters.

One character has to die. Honestly, it's like a horror movie (there's a reason The Notebook recut as a horror movie works so well). You go into Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Safe Haven thinking the exact same thing – who's going to die.

Just as aside here, I'm going to "spoil" the movie for you, but we all know where this is headed. Somebody's dead, two people live happily ever after and the theater full of women are weeping, while any husband present rolls his eyes.

It all opens with a women running frantically away from a crime scene in Boston with the police chasing her. While they want you to assume this little petite girl is some runaway criminal, you know she's not. You know the cop chasing her is her husband and he's abusive.

How do you know this? You just do. Despite what they want you to think, you see past the horrible set up to what is probably supposed to be a big twist later on.

The woman is able to escape because after stabbing her cop husband, she runs to her sweet old lady neighbors house and has time to dye her hair blond and cut it short. Amazingly enough, her hair looks better with a cheap at home hair coloring and kitchen scissor cutting than it did before. How is that even possible? Don't ask, it is the least of your worries for the rest of this movie.

She is able to get away on a bus and just randomly decides to stop in a small coastal North Carolina town. Well, it's not so random, she thinks the guy from Transformers who is running the store in town is cute. Transformers has two kids, a grumpy son and a cute girl, but his wife died of cancer.

Why yes, he does spend a large portion of the movie holding her head like that, why do you ask?
Apparently, that is the actual Safe Haven - your head in between his hands.

So, the girl has a few dollars and a bag of clothes. Having nowhere to stay, she sleeps on the beach as a homeless person. Waking up in the morning (with perfect hair and neat clothes, by the way), she sees a busy restaurant and somehow gets a job there without any form of identification or using her real name.

Now, she is able to parlay her couple bucks, one piece of luggage and day old part-time job as a waitress into buying her own house within walking distance of the beach. Yeah, don't ask. Again. Apparently, being on Dancing With the Stars has its privileges.

Later, she finds the girl from How I Met Your Mother snooping in her window. No, it's not that girl from How I Met Your Mother, it's the other one. The one who is Nick Fury's assistant in The Avengers.

She just seems awkward and not at all part of the story, which means of course that she is a pivotal person in the story. How I Met The Avengers (yes, that's my name for her) is so awkwardly forced into the role of Dancing With Transformers' (yes, that's my name for her) best friend, that you start to worry she's the ghost of the dead wife of Transformers guy.

You know how in Sixth Sense, it all seems so obvious ... after the fact. After you know Bruce Willis is dead it seems so clear, but during the film you have no idea. Yeah, Safe Haven doesn't go that route. It seems so obvious from the moment How I Met The Avengers shows up on the screen that she's Transformer guy's dead wife.

So Dancing With Transformers spends the movie growing her relationship with Transformers guy, his two kids, and off to the side, How I Met The Avengers, who gives her all of this wonderful ghosty advice on life and dating her husband.

Of course, this whole time all of the Southern people are being super Southern and super nice to the new stranger chick with a fake name. All the while, you find out her husband ... I mean, the random Boston cop chasing down this dangerous woman is a drunk.

That's not a negative stereotypical or anything. A Boston cop who is an angry drunk who beats his wife. It's like his movies tag lines should be: "Nicholas Sparks movies: killing off characters and offending Yankees since 1999."

All you need to know is that angry drunk husband/cop continues the all out assault on his liver, while Dancing With Transformers and Transformers deepen their relationship until he finds out she's a murder suspect or something. Then they kiss and make up because who would Dancing With Transformers be without Transformers?

When Drunk Yankee shows up at the quaint Southern patriotic parade looking for his wife, you would think that things would get interesting. They don't. He meanders around town smacking floats, looking drunk and stalking Dancing With Transformers. 

Why doesn't he go ahead and go after his wife, you ask. Because the entire movie Transformers and the local cop have been randomly talking non-stop about some big firework show, which tells you that the climax of the movie will happen then. It's almost like the film decided to fly right by foreshadowing and employ fore-going-ahead-and-just-telling-you-everything-that-will-happen.

Of course Transformers leaves his girlfriend and his small daughter back at home while he goes and shoots fireworks with his friends out in the ocean, even though Dancing With Transformers is scared of Drunk Yankee finding her and Transformers promised her that the safest place she could be is with him.

Blah, blah, blah, Drunk Yankee sets Transformers' store on fire with the little girl trapped inside and tries to shoot Dancing With Transformers, but instead kills himself while laying on top of her.

Obviously, Dancing With Transformers pops right up without a drop of blood to be seen or a hair out of place on her still perfectly styled and dyed hair. (Women, find out what home hair dye she used because apparently it is magical.)

Then, they all live happily ever after, but not yet.

Not until after Transformers goes into his house/store that burned to the ground and finds letters from his dead wife in a desk drawer. Yes, the building is literally nothing but ashes, but somehow an old metal desk survives the fire and a fall from the second floor in order to keep these letters unscathed.

Of course, one of those letters is from the dead wife to "Her." When Dancing With Transformers goes to read it, for some reason, she hears it in the voice of How I Met The Avengers ... well that's just odd. The dead wife says she wants to be a part of her husband's new relationship ... also odd, but in a totally different way.

The letter closes with a mysterious hint that the dead wife may still be there with Dancing With Transformers and Transformers. Inside the envelope, for some random reason, is a photo of the wife ...

and it's ...

who could it be ...

what shocking twist are they setting us up for ...

the dead wife is ...

How I Met The Avengers!!!

Oh man, I never saw that coming. That was completely unexpected and by "unexpected," I mean "completely expected." (Yes, I did just steal a joke from Phineas & Ferb.)

So, now that we know the dead wife will continue snooping on her living husband and his new girl, we can all sob our eyes out knowing love has won the day. Wait, what?