Review: 'Longest Ride' is certainly long
The pretty coed doesn't want to go, doesn't see herself “as a rodeo gal.” But her sorority sisters insist she ogle the “easy on the eyes” cowboys with them.
He rides a bull, falls off and loses his hat. She picks it up as he dusts himself off. Her blue eyes lock with his blue eyes.
Welcome to Nicholas Sparks' world. Welcome to “The Longest Ride.”
Clint Eastwood's son Scott stars as laconic Luke, an archetypal Sparks hero — quiet, brave, courtly. Britt Robertson, earning “next big thing” buzz thanks to her role in the upcoming “Tomorrowland,” is Sophia Danko, the art-history major about to graduate but about to find herself distracted by the handsome cowboy.
Their old-fashioned first date ends with him rescuing an old man (Alan Alda) from a car wreck. She recovers the man's precious box of mementos — a Purple Heart, old love letters. And in reading those to the old man in the hospital, she and Luke learn of a great love of the past and what it takes to achieve such a love — in Sparks' world.
It does no good to over-think the high-fructose corn syrup served up in this fantasy land, but when you flash back to 1940, you're telling us the man in the hospital is in his 90s. Alda, who twinkles and pretty much steals the picture, doesn't suggest that.
Luke is bull-riding to save the family ranch in Walkerton, N.C., near Greensboro, where the World War II love story of Ruth (Oona Chaplin) and Ira (Jack Huston) is set. That's not exactly known as cattle country or a bull-riding training ground.
Director George Tillman Jr., who did the fine “Notorious” Biggy Smalls bio-pic, manages stunningly real bull-riding scenes and gives his winsome young stars plenty of room to shine, though neither rises above dull. Chaplin and Huston set off a few sparks in the flashbacks.
But the moment that first letter is opened and its trite, moony expressions of love and pointless (in a love letter) pages of exposition are narrated, the movie turns Sparks-insipid.
Roger Moore reviews movies for Tribune News Service.
