The Longest Ride

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: George Tilman Jr./Starring: Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Melissa Benoist, Oona Chaplain, Jack Huston and Lolita Davidovitch

In this blog, I generally avoid bashing any film adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel because I liken the experience to bullying a nun; it provides little challenge and it may be perceived as mean-spirited. But I couldn't grant George Tilman Jr.'s The Longest Ride free passage. I figured I'd let too many other Sparks adaptations escape ridicule and critical evisceration because, well...they're nuns.

I always feel sorry for any cast in a movie inspired by a Sparks novel. They have to utter shockingly bad dialogue and pretend the stories actually have conflict.

As most frequent movie-goers are aware by now, Hollywood has been desperate to reproduce The Notebook, though it is unconcerned how unapologetically formulaic and aggressively insipid other iterations may be. The Longest Ride (which feels like one), didn't really bore me; it made me laugh often, though it isn't a comedy. I tried hard to suppress giggles and keep my face-palms to a bare minimum but the movie was unaccommodating.

Let's face it, if you've seen The Notebook, you've seen George Tilman Jr.'s flick. It merely replaces Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams with Scott Eastwood and Britt "No, I'm not Jennifer Lawrence" Robertson and James Garner and Gena Rowlands with Alan Alda and well, nobody. Same story but with a few tweaks to make it appear it's a different movie.

In this "version", Scott Eastwood (bearing a scary resemblance to his old man) plays Luke Collins (the name couldn't be more Cowboy); a competitive bull-rider in the North Carolina rodeo circuit. Eastwood makes a very convincing rodeo competitor (come to think of it, Clint would have made one too, in his day) and is an ideal Sparks stud; tall, muscular, tough and always laconic.

During one of his competitions, a Wake Forest University sorority girl named Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson) is prodded to the rodeo by a gaggle of her sisters. After they watch Luke execute a successful ride, his hat escapes the ring and comes to rest near Sophia. He asks her to keep it, while she and her friends dreamily ogle the charismatic, young man.

At a local watering hole that evening, the two meet, and agree to a date. Sophia warns Luke her she is to begin an internship at a Manhattan art gallery soon, which may preempt their romance.

And what Nicholas Sparks story would be complete without an elderly person pining for a lost love, one forged in the distant past. That person is Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), a widower who spends his days missing his wife.

One night, while Luke and Sophia are driving home from a date, the two find Ira's car crashed into a tree. As Luke pulls Ira from the smoldering wreckage, Sophia retrieves a box resting in the front seat. Later, at the hospital, she discovers love letters Ira had once sent inside the box, which again, if you've seen The Notebook, you know where the story will lead.

We know Sophia will ask Ira about the letters and because his failing vision won't allow him access to the missives, she becomes his surrogate reader. And in reading them, we discover an old romance which, if you've seen other films of this ilk (and most people have), alerts us to how the story will be structured: Luke and Sophia's romance will play out against Ira's, which takes us back to the early 1940s', when he worked in his family's clothing store. A young woman named Ruth (Oona Chaplain); a newly arrived Austrian Jew who, with her mother and father, narrowly escaped the Nazis, wanders into the Levinson store. Young Ira (Jack Huston) sees Ruth and is instantly smitten. The two meet and before long the two become an item. After some heady dates and time together, their relationship is tested when Ira is drafted into the army.

I have to say the battle scenes, particularly one in which we watch Ira bravely rescue a comrade from no man's land are so visually uninspired they couldn't have passed muster on Hogan's Heroes. But that is an unfair knock; young girls and women who will make up the majority of the audience for the film can't be expected to care about Saving Private Ryan realism.

Knowing Luke's passion for bull-riding and Sophia's for art, how long do you think it will take for their respective worlds to clash? And is it any surprise that Luke's mom, Kate (Lolita Davidovitch, in a wisp of a character) pleas with her son to stop bull-riding, fearing something catastrophic? And is it any surprise that Sophia begins to hector him the same way, which elicits a response we heard coming from the opening credits: "I don't know how to do anything else."

If my feet weren't stuck in the molasses of Luke and Ruth's relationship, I was too busy chuckling at Ira and Ruth. I tried to ignore Oona Chaplain's (granddaughter of Charlie Chaplain) Austrian accent, which was as wide as the Danube. When she wasn't slinging her accent around, she was saying peculiar things. For instance, while gamboling along a North Carolina shore with Ira, Ruth exclaims ecstatically, "This is beginning to remind me of home." Strange thing to say, considering home meant fleeing the Nazis. And if running along a beach reminds her of home, what Austrian beach might she be missing exactly? Does the Danube have sandy shores I'm unaware of?

I can't imagine the American south was a Norman Rockwell halcyon in the 1940s as it's depicted in the film. No anti-Semitism anywhere?

The connective tissue between the couples of the past and present is art. Ruth and Sophia are both art lovers and a collection Ruth and Ira amass will figure prominently in the present.

It was darn tough to find anything in the film resembling conflict. Sure, Luke's bull-riding is an issue as is Ruth and Ira's inability to have children (Ira is wounded during the war, rendering him sterile). Their attempt to play parents to one of her students, whose home-life is a sad tale of neglect, comes closest to anything resembling sturm and drang. What real drama there is is so mild and tension-free the characters may as well be troubled by bad tummy aches and paper-cuts.

Tilman, who has done some fine work behind the camera (Notorious), is hamstrung with what is a typical Nicholas Sparks story. Even the visuals are stifled. It isn't surprising to see so many aerial tracking shots of the North Carolina country-side; they seem to be a fixture in most of these movies.

Aside from serviceable dialogue that hobbles the performances, there isn't a convincing exchange between any actors the film entire. Poor Melissa Benoist had to make her way through Danny Collins, only to end up in The Longest Ride, where the dialogue has scarcely improved.

Scott Eastwood certainly inherited his father's charisma (and a more rugged physique) but can't bring anything interesting to the role though he and the cast can't be blamed, the script must have read like a car maintenance manual.

The ending is an eye-roller and a major hoot. After Ira kicks the bucket, his and Ruth's substantially valuable art collection is willed to Luke and Sophia with an improbable proviso that brings a sappy two hours to a merciful close.

I highly recommend the film to women (or men) who might find the sight of Scott Eastwood's Adonis-like body worth a gander. Unfortunately for men (for these films are made mostly for women), Britt Robertson provides some but not much distraction from the silly drama playing out onscreen. Or if the sight of a doddering, sickly Alan Alda flicks your switch, then knock yourself out. Otherwise, there is little reason to see The Longest Ride.

I'm sure the next Nicholas Sparks adaptation is but a year away. I'm aquiver with anticipation.