There's just something about a Nicholas Sparks adaptation that sends women to the theaters and guys running for the hills.

You see, Sparks drives critics up the wall. He writes some of the most patently cliché and predictable works of romantic fiction the world has ever known. But does so in a manner that makes people fall in love time and again. Every single one of them ends the same way -- with you crying. Oh, yeah. And somebody dies. Somebody always dies. It's the Nicholas Sparks way. You have better odds surviving as a character in a survival horror film than you do as the romantic lead in a Sparks novel. And you can bet your bottom that you won't survive in the adaptation either. He writes tales of sweeping, epic, immortal love -- and then kills someone, tragically. Sometimes it feels a bit over the top like in Message in a Bottle. Other times it winds up being one of the greatest romances of a generation, like The Notebook.

The problem with Nights in Rodanthe isn't that it's a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. It's that it feels far too much like it's trying to be a Nicholas Sparks adaptation, almost as if Sparks is aping himself and painting by numbers to add in new characters to old story elements. What works best in his stories are his new takes of the genre, his new spins on old romantic devices. Tracking down the writer of a love letter; reading the story of how you fell in love with your Alzheimer-patient wife with the hopes that she'll remember; as a trouble teen, falling in love with a dying girl and setting out to make the rest of her life magical ... these are stories that break your heart.

Nights in Rodanthe, on the other hand, is the story of a separated, cheated-on mother of two who spends a magical weekend in a house on the beach with a doctor searching for himself. And then they fall in love. Sparks sans the gimmick just feels like going through the motions.

You know every beat of this story before it happens and none of it is powerful or memorable enough to really leave a dent. Is it sweet? Well acted? Well intentioned? Yep, on all counts. It's just a predictable love story without the magical glue that usually holds these adaptations together. Both Diane Lane and Richard Gere are fantastic, but their chemistry is one more in line with two people healing one another than of two people passionately falling in love. And while that sells the film's central message about the healing power of love, it makes it hard to fall in love along with them.

Which leads to the film's final problem: the fact the it spends the bulk of its time on the love affair between Gere and Lane. When all is said and done the film seems to be more about two parents rediscovering themselves and their children. Had more time been spent on developing these relationships and stories, the film could have left a greater impact. Instead, it's a meandering love story that warns you well in advance that something is about to happen, and unfortunately, you can tell exactly what that something is. It's not a bad movie, just not one playing in the same league of the other Sparks' classics.

Nights in Rodanthe is available on an extras-free disc from Warner Home Video. Nicholas Sparks' classic The Notebook, in a super-special edition, is also available now.

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