I went to see "Message in a Bottle" the other day armed with tissues. Contrary to some people's image of critics as androids with hearts of titanium, I'm an unabashed weeper (I frightened the publicists by sobbing through "Nell"), and I have a special fondness for blubbersome romances where the couple is so right and yet so wrong, so close and yet so far, etc.

To my disappointment, though, I emerged from the voluptuous corniness of this new Kevin Costner extravaganza having squeezed out little more than two isolated tears -- and this despite the fact that Costner plays a handsome, sensitive widower who loves his perfect dead wife just a little too much to appreciate the wonderful live woman staring him in the face in the person of Robin Wright Penn.

It wasn't that I didn't root for their happiness, or admire the long, pretty sequences during which the couple lounged, photogenically, in front of a fire. It's just that... in his eagerness to win back fans who might be dangerously close to giving up on him after his "Waterworld" and "Postman" out-of-body experiences, Costner plays such a safe, bland, wounded, middle-aged pup that it's hard to work up much passion for his pain.

He's cute, yes indeed, and I love what the sea breezes do when they ruffle his khakis. But as Costner plays the hero on low heat, he's a laconic sadsack who needs lessons from his old father on how to even ask a woman out on a date. And why shed tears over a baby like that? Plus -- and here's the point -- the father is such a fox. As in foxy. As in Paul Newman who, with merely a tilt of his head or the way he sets his hat, makes the character of an old, crotchety, reformed drunk into a man of delicious juice and obvious sex appeal.

In a catchy line of dialogue included in all the movie's promos on TV, the dad says to the sparkling woman interested in his son something like, "If I were 150 years younger, you'd be in big trouble, young lady." To which any right-thinking viewer will respond, "Hey, lady, skip the dweeb in the boating shoes, he's about as passionate as a soft-boiled egg. Go for the old guy!" And save your hanky for a romance that earns it.