PARADISE BAY

Again from Pratt (Ticket Home, 2001, etc.), a love story too saccharine and formulaic to be affecting.

Moving between present and past, the story celebrates true love as well as the reunion between a father and son. When Jack Santos, a musician, learns he’s the son of noted composer and singer Levi Harper, a Vietnam vet who miraculously recovered from a three-decadelong coma to marry his childhood sweetheart, become a star, and father a daughter, Jack is thrilled but wrenched. Levi has suffered a heart attack—brought on by the stress of dealing with wife Jenna’s cancer and late pregnancy—and again is in a coma. It may be too late to speak to him, but Jack has Levi’s journals, so he can learn all about his father’s past. He returns to Paradise Bay, an idyllic fishing village on the California coast where Levi was raised, and begins reading. He discovers that the musically gifted Levi met Jenna in grade school and the two vowed eternal love but that Jenna’s family moved and they lost contact. At college, Levi has an affair with one Carol Santos, and when she falls pregnant, he promises to marry her before he leaves for Vietnam. On the wedding eve, though, he meets up with Jenna, realizes he still loves her, and cannot marry Carol. Abandoning her, he leaves for Vietnam, where he has lots of good buddies; saves a Vietnamese man and a baby girl (who will play a role in the lives of both Levi and Jack); and fights bravely. But just before he’s due to marry Jenna on leave, he’s wounded and made comatose for the next 30 years. Pratt, though, is an energetic and sentimental miracle-worker, so numerous happy outcomes await.

Sweetness and light in a plot riddled with shortcuts.