MOVIE REVIEW - The Lucky One

The latest Nicholas Sparks book to come to the movies is, The Lucky One. And it's here this weekend.

TLO stars all grown up Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling as Logan and Beth respectively. Logan is a former marine who has just come home three tours in The Middle East. While he was there, he found a beautiful picture of a pretty young woman (Beth) in the rubble after a late night raid. He can not find out who the picture belongs to. So it seems that the picture is from a marine killed in action. Logan then starts to think that the picture is his guardian angel, and vows that if he makes it out alive, he will find this woman and return the picture.

As he returns to the states, he finds it difficult to spend time at his sisters house, so he strikes out to find the woman in the picture. This is not surprising. In fact, nothing in this movie is the slightest bit surprising, and that's the real weakness of this flick.

This is horribly written for the big screen. It is very manipulative and becomes an "aww" fest. Check this out. Logan tracks Beth down somehow on the Internet with really no information at all. Then he decides to walk, (I said, walk) from Colorado to Louisiana to find her, (awww). Oh, yeah, with his trusty German Shepard, Zeus (aww) who is in the movie for some reason. She hires him to work at her stuggling business without knowing his story, and he's best worker all time, (aww). He then can't bring himself to tell her the truth, (aww), and they reluctantly start to fall in love, (aww).

She, of course is a typical Sparks woman character. She's young and beautiful, the world is stacked against her, and she's a single mom. Also, she owns a dog boarding hotel, (aww), and lives in this gigantic house on a huge farm, (aww), just like most struggling single people do. She is a former elementary school teacher (aww) , who is loved all over town. And her mom, lives with her and of course is a great woman, and overall person too.

In short, it's the Sparks formula. Logan is too good to be true, and so is Beth. And everyone else in the movie that we are supposed to like are too good to be true too. And then somehow it all works out in the end, with plenty more aww moments along the way. The problem in this flick though is that it never really seems to get going. It is disjointed, and convenient at times. It also has some real dead spots in it and it is amazingly predictable all along the way.

Why does she own a pet hotel? It's not even a part of the story. Why does Logan have this great dog? He's just there to look at, and not really be in the story. Why does it take so long for these young and beautiful, available people to come together? None of this really makes any real sense. But you know what? NONE of this is going to make one bit of difference. This is a movie that the core audience is in love with long before they walk into the theater. For Sparks fans, there is virtually nothing that can be done that will make one person not love this movie.
And that's OK, we need passionate fans going to the movie.

But this Sparks story is more relevant than many, as it deals head on with what is going on in our world today. And that's great. But with it's formula outside of the circumstances, it's just the same stuff over and over again. Basically infallible, young, stunningly beautiful people meandering through a tortuous world alone for some reason until they find each other and fall in love. The only new ground was this takes place in Louisiana and not in Sparks' home area of the Mid-Atlantic Coast.

The Lucky One. It's another Sparks movie. They all look, sound and are the same. And for the fans, that's OK with them.