For those who just can't get enough of "The Notebook," "The Longest Ride," written by Craig Bolotin and directed by George Tillman, Jr., is guaranteed to stir up all those feelings from the earlier film - not a surprise, given that they're both derived from novels by Nicholas Sparks, that modern-day purveyor of romantic schmaltz. Plus, the plots are practically the same. Can one be accused of plagiarizing oneself?
Once again we find ourselves in the land of parallel romances, with one set in the present and the other set in the past - and both are equally insufferable.
The one in the present involves Sophia (Britt Robertson) and Luke (Scott Eastwood), who seem to be vying for the Most Beautiful Couple in the World Award. Luke is a champion bull rider with courtly country ways who's still recovering from a nasty spill he took a year earlier. Sophia is a citified art student with no interest in cowboys until she hooks up with this dashing young bronco-buster straight out of Hollywood Casting. One night, on the way home from their first date, Luke and Sophia rescue a crusty old man (Alan Alda) from a burning car and take him to the hospital. At his request, Sophia salvages a box of old letters chronicling the sappy romance between him and his late wife back in 1940s North Carolina (Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin play the couple in their youth).
The romance between Luke and Sophia is all coy looks and twinkling eyes, filled with opposite-world troubles and manufactured obstacles. They do, however, learn valuable relationship lessons from the correspondence of the older couple, a narrative contrivance that was irksome enough in "The Notebook" and is doubly so here.
And the "happy ending" needs to be seen to be believed (and, even then, there's no guarantee you will).
Once again we find ourselves in the land of parallel romances, with one set in the present and the other set in the past - and both are equally insufferable.
The one in the present involves Sophia (Britt Robertson) and Luke (Scott Eastwood), who seem to be vying for the Most Beautiful Couple in the World Award. Luke is a champion bull rider with courtly country ways who's still recovering from a nasty spill he took a year earlier. Sophia is a citified art student with no interest in cowboys until she hooks up with this dashing young bronco-buster straight out of Hollywood Casting. One night, on the way home from their first date, Luke and Sophia rescue a crusty old man (Alan Alda) from a burning car and take him to the hospital. At his request, Sophia salvages a box of old letters chronicling the sappy romance between him and his late wife back in 1940s North Carolina (Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin play the couple in their youth).
The romance between Luke and Sophia is all coy looks and twinkling eyes, filled with opposite-world troubles and manufactured obstacles. They do, however, learn valuable relationship lessons from the correspondence of the older couple, a narrative contrivance that was irksome enough in "The Notebook" and is doubly so here.
And the "happy ending" needs to be seen to be believed (and, even then, there's no guarantee you will).