Review: The Longest Ride
"I am an ordinary man who fell in love with an extraordinary woman." That line from The Longest Ride sums up the apparently surefire appeal of Nicholas Sparks' stories. Whatever the period, whatever the circumstance, the women are the suns around which men orbit. The women may face trials and tribulations in their loves, but they decide their fates, though they may believe otherwise. The men are either eternally grateful for being chosen, irreparably heartbroken at being passed over, or called upon to sacrifice their own personal happiness. Sometimes all of the above.
In The Longest Ride, the latest product off the the conveyor belt, Sparks presents devotees with two romances. The first, which takes place in present day North Carolina, focuses on the blossoming love story between Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood) and Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson). Like most of Sparks' lovers, Luke and Sophia come from two different worlds. He is a bull rider determined to make his way back to the top after being sidelined for nearly a year after a near-fatal injury. She is an art history major about to move to New York for an important internship. Sophia is taken with his old-fashioned ways and chiseled good looks - not to mention those rock hard abs! - but, like his mother (Lolita Davidovich), concerned for his safety in the ring. He's impressed with her intelligence and all-around amazingness, but doesn't exactly envision himself fitting in her tony and pretentious world. Why even take a chance at love if there's no guarantee of a future together?
Luckily, the youngsters come across Ira Levinson (the indispensable Alan Alda), whom they rescue from a roadside accident so he can inevitably counsel them on the ups and downs of life and love. He once had a great love, a cultured beauty named Ruth (Oona Chaplin) who arrived in America at the onset of World War II. The younger Ira (played by Jack Huston) was a mere tailor's son who, like Luke, was not particularly passionate about art. Yet Ira loved Ruth and so he loved what she loved. But was their love strong enough to overcome wartime injuries, childlessness, and other heartbreaks?
It seems pointless to comment on something specifically engineered to be withstand criticism. A Nicholas Sparks film is very much its own being, with its own rules and requirements. The director and the actors are there to serve the story and stick to the tried and true formula. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. A Sparks film offers escape the same way a Bond film or a Marvel movie or a Three Stooges comedy does. It will, whatever its failings, always offer some amount of satisfaction.
By its own standards, The Longest Ride is not half-bad. Eastwood and Robertson are pretty people. Eastwood possesses his father's Rawhide-era good looks, but this film is not where the actual measure of his talent can be determined. The same goes for Robertson, who knits her brows very attractively to indicate the limited spectrum of emotions defined in the script. Neither rise above the material in the way that Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams did in The Notebook or even Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep did in The Bridges of Madison County. One can't exactly be too emotionally invested when both Eastwood and Robertson appear to be going through the motions. They're saying the words, they're conveying the proper facial expressions, but they are both disconnected from their characters.
Chaplin, on the other hand, is terrific. The granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin may be best known as Talisa Maegyr from Game of Thrones, but she has been an outstanding presence in other works such as the short-lived UK series The Hour and the British comedy program Dates. As Ruth, she is an absolute firecracker that brings the movie to life and nearly makes it better than it is. She and Huston also share a more convincing chemistry than their modern counterparts. Ira and Ruth's story is the more interesting and further developed of the two romances on offer, and The Longest Ride stalls whenever it shifts focus away from them.
The Longest Ride
Directed by: George Tillman, Jr.
Written by: Craig Bolotin; adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks
Starring: Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Oona Chaplin, Jack Huston, Lolita Davidovich, Melissa Benoist
