There are two types of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. The first is much more common, being the boring, sappy romances where love is the most powerful force in the world and people cry and die (i.e. The Notebook). The second is the stupid, cuckoo bananas romance, terribly pulling in other genre elements to make a hodgepodge bit of nonsense (i.e. Safe Haven). The second is so much more fun to watch, and anytime I start a Sparks film I am hoping for that film. Unfortunately, The Longest Ride, the most recent Sparks adaptation, falls into the first category, and it made me fall in love… with my watch (nailed it!).
In the ancient past of 2007, Britt Robertson, whose character’s name escapes me (an IMDb search reveals it’s Sophia Danko) and it was all I could to do remember she was “not Jennifer Lawrence“, is studying art at Wake Forest. She has an internship lined up in a New York art gallery, which she’ll start in two months, but we have to build a plot for this movie before we can get to that.
One day, she is dragged by her friend (Melissa Benoist) to a rodeo, where she locks eyes with our feature’s “Hunky Cowboy” and resident bull rider Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood). The two find each other quite pretty, and she is charmed by his Southern Gentleman-ness, even though he has no trace of any kind of accent or anything. On the way home from their first date, they see a car on the side of the road, on fire, and Alan Alda is in it. Instead of asking questions about his time on “MASH”, they take him to the hospital, not forgetting a wicker box in the front seat of the car.
Sophia gets snoopy and decides to go through Alda’s box. It’s filled with letters. Alda can’t read anymore, so she decides to read them to him. So, paralleled to her’s and Hunky Cowboy’s love story, we’re also given young Alda (Jack Huston) and his wife’s (Oona Chaplin) love story. Two for the price of one! And guess what? His wife is into art too! And their relationship parallels the ups and downs of Sophia and her Hunky Cowboy! What are the odds?! I certainly couldn’t believe it.
The flashback segments work far better than the present day ones. Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin are much better than to stoop to doing this kind of material, but you believe them as a couple who really do love each other. Chaplin, in particular, gives this movie some much needed life. And that is important because the present day courting between Sophia and Luke is not the least bit compelling. They are pretty people who figure out they will be together forever in less than two months. He learns to not put his life in danger because he’s in love, and she learns… well, not much. She gets everything she wants without much trouble.
I am going to get into spoiler territory here, not that you should (or do) care, but Luke has been berated by his mother (Lolita Davidovich) and Sophia to stop bull riding, after sustaining head injury after head injury. He utters the line, “It’s all I know.” Seriously, he says that. Well, we all know he is going to stop at some point and see it isn’t worth the risk. They have positioned one particular bull as the craziest and meanest, not to forget he previously put Luke in a coma for ten days. He, of course, gets that bull in the finals, and here is where you expect him to turn away and go to his lady. Except, he still rides the bull and wins, and then he realizes it. So, nothing gets sacrificed. Everybody wins everything. Stakes? Who cares?
This is just another entry into the long line of sappy romances from Nicholas Sparks. If you want to see pretty people make out and have a camera glide up and down their bodies, by all means go. It is not campy enough to be fun and not saccharine enough to be infuriating. It is boring, recycled clichés without much lifting it up, aside from Oona Chaplin. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I would much rather a movie be actively terrible. I would at least be invested in its awfulness. I glanced at my watch approximately every five minutes. One time in particular I thought about fifteen minutes had passed, and it was only four. Unless you don’t see yourself oohing and aahing at Scott Eastwood’s abs, there is not anything for you here.
