Forces of Nature

Comment:
There are some movies that seems to be absolutely ordinary and plain, at least from their advertisement and from a short summary of the plot. Forces of Nature perfectly fits this category since it seems to be a comical romantic comedy with an unlikely plot whose only aim is the development of the love story between the two main characters. However, the actual movie is much better than this, and while it cannot be considered as a masterpiece, it is quite enjoyable and much more brilliant than the average.

Having said that, the plot could be described as a mix between a road movie, a 'disasters' movie, a romantic comedy and a comical tragedy. In fact, the story is about the misadventures of Ben and Sarah during their travel from New York to Savannah, the former going there to get married with his fiancee Bridget, the latter to arrange an important business. Their travel is plagued by a plane accident, a bad hitchhiking, a wrong train, a hurricane and the typical loss of money which forces them to devise various tricks in order to reach their destination.

Even if most of these situations are quite predictable, the movie is not boring at all, it is often very funny and the humor is usually of high level. The romantic side is also fairly interesting even if sometimes it focuses on a lame sub-plot featuring an ex-boyfriend of Bridget that just seems to be a way to distract us from the main plot. What I found particularly amusing and curious are the encounters between Ben and various people that made negative comments about getting married, starting from his grandfather that tells him that "marriage is a prison". Incidentally, this reminded me of the great When Harry met Sally where the plot was often interrupted by small scenes of people speaking positively about their marriage!

Although these kind of movies doesn't usually show any peculiarity in the direction or in the photography, in this case we have a few beautiful shots of sunsets and storms and a couple of scenes featuring a very attractive slow-motion of water-drops and hail-stones falling from the sky. This is a very welcome addition to the genre of 'light and romantic comedies' and I can only hope that in the future all this kind of movies will feature a similar 'personal touch' of the director.

Even the ending is quite interesting as it is not easy to guess if Ben will choose to marry Bridget or if he'll start a 'serious' relationship with Sarah. Moreover, the scenes of the party in the garden threatened by the hurricane are well made and provides a perfect background for the closure of the story. After all, this movie seems to be a good way to spend two amusing hours at the cinema and will probably appeal to everybody.