The Lucky One

Posted on April 19, 2012 at 6:31 pm

Director Scott Hicks pours enough syrup over this film to supply an IHOP. Every shot of the golden sunlight on the Louisiana bayou or the perfectly tousled angelic curls of the perfectly precocious angelic boy or the perfect smile of the beautiful kennel owner and substitute teacher played by Taylor Schilling or the perfect muscles of the beautiful former Marine who seems to be channeling “as you wish” Westley from “The Princess Bride” all but drips with syrupy sweetness. Then there is the aural candy of the many pop songs on the soundtrack. This is outdone by the storyline, which matches the sugar content of the visuals with a synthetic and coincidence-heavy plot. But that doesn’t mean it it not a pleasant movie-watching experience in a greeting card commercial sort of way.

It helps that Zac Efron and Schilling are talented and attractive performers with good chemistry. Efron plays Logan, a Marine on his third tour who finds a picture of a beautiful girl half-buried in the sand. It becomes his lucky talisman. When he finds himself back at home, not sure who he is or where he belongs without his team and traumatized by loss, he decides to find the girl in the picture and thank her. He walks from Colorado to Louisiana with his dog, Zeus. Instead of telling her why he is there, he ends up working for her, helping to care for the dogs and also looking very handsome as he lifts things and fixes things. Schilling is Beth, who lives with her grandmother (Blythe Danner) and her 7-year-old son Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), a violinist and chess whiz. Beth’s ex-husband Keith (Jay R. Ferguson) is a bully of a cop who is volatile, possessive, and jealous. As Logan and Beth are more drawn to one another, Keith threatens to sue for custody of Ben to keep him away from them.

“The questions are complicated but the answers are simple,” Logan says when Beth challenges him to quote his favorite philosopher. “Voltaire?” she asks. “Dr. Seuss,” he answers. Logan, who has accepted a job cleaning up after dogs because it is “peaceful” may understand that simple does not mean superficial better than Nicholas Sparks, author of the book and director Hicks, who seem determined to keep things safely formulaic.

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Contest: Nicholas Sparks’ The Lucky One

Posted on April 17, 2012 at 3:47 pm

In honor of this week’s release of “The Lucky One,” I am giving away a copy of the Nicholas Sparks novel it is based on. Zac Efron stars as a U.S. Marine who finds a photograph of a beautiful woman. It becomes a talisman for him and he feels that it keeps him safe. When he comes back to the United States, he goes in search of her and when he meets her he is too emotional to tell her why he is there. If you’d like to read the book — which conveniently comes with its own little package of tissues — send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with “Lucky One” in the subject line and tell me your favorite Nicholas Sparks movie. Don’t forget your address. (U.S. addresses only) I’ll pick a winner at random on April 21. Good luck!

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Books Contests and Giveaways

The Last Song

Posted on August 17, 2010 at 8:15 am

Miley Cyrus shows us how her reach exceeds her grasp in “The Last Song,” an attempt to move past Hannah Montana. She has become Disney’s most valuable property through the force of her personality, comic timing, and way with a pop song. But pop princesses grow up, though usually not quite as quickly as they want to. And valuable properties are hard to turn down. So when one of the world’s biggest superstars-turned-brand wants to make a grown-up movie, she gets her way.

That is why “The Last Song” plays like a check-list of everything a 17-year old would like to make as an antidote to the perpetually sunny Hannah Montana rather than a movie that works. After the sugary Disney Channel hijinks, she gets to play something a tiny bit edgy, a sulky teenager with a pierced nose, sent to live with her estranged father for the summer. Nicholas Sparks, for the first time adapting one of his own books, supplies his brand of synthetic syrup — broken hearts must find love amidst devastating losses, preferably through some exchanges of mail, all of this near a body of water with a beach.

Cyrus plays Veronica (Ronnie), a recent high school graduate who is so angry at just about everything and everyone that she is refusing to go to Julliard in the fall even though she is so talented that they accepted despite her refusal to play the piano. They just knew how great she was and accepted her anyway. Her mother (Kelly Preston) drops her off with her little brother Jonah (Bobby Coleman in the film’s most natural performance) at their dad’s beach house. Jonah is thrilled to be there but Ronnie is still angry with their father (Greg Kinnear as Steve) for leaving them and refuses to have anything to do with him as she had refused to read his letters.

Ronnie meets a cute guy named Will (Liam Hemsworth) and they bond over protecting a nest of sea turtle eggs. A falling-in-love montage is quickly followed by a trying-on-clothes-in-the-vintage-shop montage, which at least has the advantage of giving us a break from the dialogue and plot developments. But before long, the screen is littered with complications as Will and Ronnie have to cope with divided loyalties and then with something much more serious.

It’s all pretty enough, and Sparks is an expert at manipulative melodrama. Cyrus has a likable, unforced screen presence but does not have the training or focus to make Ronnie real or show us any change more significant than the switch from black to pastels and the disappearance of the nose stud. The screenplay feels episodic and scattered, like a collection of discount greeting cards. And the movie feels like a very expensive screen test for a star who needs to learn that sitcom skills are not enough to make a movie drama work.

Dear John

Posted on May 25, 2010 at 8:00 am

Nicholas Sparks writes the equivalent of comfort food, high-carb, low-nutrition, but sometimes it hits the spot. His stories usually feature relationships that are not just true and deep and loving but healing. And then, like ripping off a band-aid, he tears it asunder, but in a manner that demonstrates just how true and deep and loving and healing the relationship was but how ennobling as well. And there is usually some object of deep metaphoric and sentimental value.

Ladies, prepare your hankies.

This time, the author of “The Notebook,” “Message in a Bottle,” “Nights in Rodanthe,” “A Walk to Remember” and this spring’s “The Last Song” (starring Miley Cyrus) gives us John (Channing Tatum) and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried of “Mamma Mia!” and “Big Love”). She is a kind-hearted girl and he is a special forces soldier with some anger issues. They have some soft-focus moments on the beach in Charleston while he is on leave and she is on spring vacation. She is considerate to his socially impaired father (Richard Jenkins) and he is understanding with her autistic neighbor. Two weeks later, they are very much in love, and agree to write as he completes his last year of service, as they look forward to being together as soon as it is over. But 9/11 changes everything. As Richard Lovelace wrote almost 400 years ago, “I could not love thee, dear, so much/Loved I not honor more.” As wrenching as it is for both of them, they know his place is with his team, defending freedom.

But then, she writes a “Dear John” letter telling him that she is engaged. He is wounded, recovers, and returns to battle. When he finally sees her again, he learns that her choice was not what he thought.

Director Lasse HallstrÃ¶m (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “The Cider House Rules,” “My Life as a Dog”) keeps things from getting too syrupy and Tatum and Seyfried have a sweet, easy connection. Henry Thomas (the kid from “E.T”) has warmth and humor as the single father of the autistic boy. Richard Jenkins does what he can in the underwritten role of John’s father, whose reserve and awkwardness may be attributable to an autism spectrum disorder. We’re on the side of these undeniably decent and very pretty people. But there is nothing they can do to make the last third of the film feel emotionally or narratively believable. If at the end of the movie, you ask whether there was any other reason for a character not to provide more information much earlier and the only answer is that they had to find a way to fill the last 40 minutes of screen time, that is not going to work. And the sweetness of the original connection is dissolved in what feels like a trick.

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Based on a book Date movie Romance

Nights in Rodanthe

Posted on September 25, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some sensuality.
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, characters get drunk
Violence/ Scariness:	Sad death
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 26, 2008

Of course Richard Gere is going to fall in love with Diane Lane in this movie. How could he resist her and why would he try? Certainly the audience will fall in love with her, too. There is no actress who conveys so much with so little. The subtlety and complexity of her performances is one of the wonders of cinema. Close-ups were invented for Lane’s rare beauty, inside and out. We feel that it is her spirit as an actress and a character illuminating this story.

And we cannot help but feel a sense of completion in seeing the two of them together, after two previous films that showed their palpable connection. This film, based on the book by chronicler of the grown-up romance Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, Message in a Bottle) puts their relationship center stage. Lane is Adrienne, a devoted single mother who is watching her best friend’s bed and breakfast for a weekend. Gere is Paul, the only guest. Adrienne’s husband, who left her for another woman, wants to come back home. Paul has come to the Outer Banks of North Carolina not to enjoy the coast but to have a conversation with someone who feels damaged by him. A storm hits the coast and (metaphor alert) Paul and Adrienne shore up the inn as they begin to open up to each other.

It is lovely to see a mature romance and this one is beautifully played by Gere and Lane, with Scott Glenn as a widower whose story provides poignant counterpoint. Viola Davis is superb as always in the thinly written role of the best friend, Christopher Meloni is fine as Adrienne’s maddening ex-husband, and an unbilled James Franco makes the most of his brief appearance as Paul’s doctor son. But it is Lane who simple honesty and luminous spirit keep us watching and believing that some day we, too, might find love and meaning and forgiveness on a stormy night in Rodanthe.