THE LONGEST RIDE
DIRECTOR: George Tillman jr
CAST: Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Jack Huston, Oona Chaplin
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12 PG S
RUNNING TIME: 130 minutes
RATING: **
If you’ve seen one film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, you’ve seen them all. So what’s left to say about the latest overwrought romance based on his book, The Longest Ride? Those who saw The Notebook, The Best of Me or Nights in Rodanthe might find his latest extremely familiar, with a couple small tweaks: bull-riding and Judaism are involved.
The movie jumps back and forth in time, following two love stories as they unfold simultaneously, yet decades apart. In the modern day, the pairing involves Luke Collins (Eastwood, son of Clint) and Sophia Danko (Robertson). He’s a competitive bull rider, looking to buck his way back to the top after an accident sidelined him for a year. He was thrown from a bad beast, Rango, and one look at the bull leaves no doubt that foreshadowing is at work; there will be a rematch.
Sophia, meanwhile, is soon to graduate with plans to move to New York City. One night she gets cajoled by a sorority sister into going to her first rodeo and enjoys it more than she expects, especially when young Luke shows off his skills for mounting an enraged bull and hanging on for dear life.
Soon the two are embarking on their first date, which in turn leads them to the scene of a car wreck. Luke and Sophia end up saving the life of the elderly man behind the wheel, Ira (Alda). He’s a curmudgeon with a heart of gold and, of course, a great love story to tell.
In flashbacks, we see Ira as a shy young man (Huston, nephew of Angelica) falling in love with the effervescent Ruth (Chaplin, grand-daughter of Charlie – do you notice a theme here?). She’s an Austrian Jew whose family fled the Nazis and relocated to Ira’s hometown.
True to form, Sparks’ intertwining stories involve impossibly beautiful people and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to their happily ever after. Sophia and Luke’s fledgling relationship is endangered by her relocation and his passion for a life-threatening sport. And then there’s Ruth, who desperately wants a bushel of children. But Ira, injured during World War II, can’t provide. The moral of the story: true love requires sacrifice, kids.
The cinematic path to this nugget of wisdom is mostly forgettable. Is it the bad dialogue or the poor editing that creates such a lack of chemistry between Luke and Sophia? Or is subpar acting part of it, too? It’s hard to tell. Eastwood doesn’t prove himself to be much more than a pretty face and chiselled body; but it would be hard for any actor to pull off some of these lines. For example, when Luke asks Sophia if she and her sorority sisters have pillow fights in their underwear, she responds: “No, we don’t wear underwear.” Witty banter this is not.
The older tale is more enjoyable. It’s during this thread that the film hits its most emotional notes, though the heavy-handed score screams, “You can start sobbing now.”
People don’t go to Sparks films for subtlety; they go to warm their hearts by bearing witness to true love. Of course, that requires a story that rings true. In The Longest Ride, authenticity is in short supply. – Washington Post
If you liked The Notebook or Nights in Rodanthe, you will like this.