Isabel is staying at her grandparents’, Sam is sleeping over at a friend’s house, so tonight was date night and Helena and I went out to a movie. It was totally a chick flick but I didn’t mind too much because it was outdoor cinema, which is a cool thing to do in our neighborhood in the summer, and we don’t do it nearly enough.
In fact, it was the 1st time this summer.
The Brunette is a Ghost
The tickets are only 50 crowns (a little over 2 bucks) and they have a couple of drawings. (dinner for two at the Pizzeria down the street, and a vacation to Greece – we didn’t win) It was nice to sit outside at night because it’s been too hot to be outside at all all day.
Anyway, Helena’s been on a jag of reading Nicholas Sparks’ books, and this was one she really liked, so she was quite looking forward to it. In the first 5 minutes, she was saying “Wait a minute, that wasn’t in the book,” and that became a common refrain.
Not having read the book, I wasn’t too worried about that. I was just struck by the amazing similarities with “Sleeping With the Enemy.” Substitute North Carolina for Iowa, and the young widower running the general store with his two cute kids for the single drama professor, and it was essentially the same film.
I wondered if maybe Nicholas Sparks had been cheating. Or at any rate, working backwards, which is maybe not exactly the same as plagiarism, there is a lot of gray area there. By working backwards I mean he saw Sleeping with the Enemy, typed it out, then started making changes. Change the names. Change the place. Add a ghost.
But I get ahead of myself. The film was kind of a snoozer, I thought, until near the end, when the abusive ex-husband tracked her down and what was cool was it was starting to get really windy and the leaves were blowing around and some big bugs were going crazy and they were dancing around in the projector’s beam and then a bit of thunder and a crack of distant lightning right during the fireworks scene and it really added character to the film but people were fleeing and we decided to, too, but got to the gazebo and said “Hey, we’ll just stand and watch it from here” and then the wind died down a bit so we went back to our seats but then the projector conked out or the film broke or something and that was that, they may have fixed it and finished the film but we decided to get home before it started raining, which we just managed.
So, Helena was filling me in on the story on the way home and I said “What was the deal with the Jo character,” because I’d felt there was more to that character than they were letting on and she was apparently the ghost of the ex-wife.
Sorry for the spoiler but it’s not a must see film unless you’re a girl who enjoys super derivative, cliché films, so I don’t feel as guilty about that as I probably should.
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