The Longest Ride (2015)

Genre

Drama | Romance

Director

George Tillman Jr.

Country

USA

Cast

Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Jack Huston, Oona Chaplin, Melissa Benoist, Lolita Davidovich, Gloria Reuben, Barry Ratcliffe, Brett Edwards, Hunter Burke, Alina Lia

Storyline

As conflicting paths and ideals test their relationship, college student Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson) and former champion bull rider Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood) make an unexpected and fateful connection with Ira (Alan Alda), whose memories of his own decades-long romance with his beloved wife deeply inspire the young couple.

Opinion

Basically every year we are blessed with another Nicholas Sparks movie, and of course 2015 made no exception, as Hollywood has produced yet another mediocre romance film.

The Longest Ride is a very, very, very long ride that tries to emphasize the meaning of true love with an half interesting plot. 

Why half interesting you ask? Because the plot, that looks like if "The Notebook" and "Dear John" had a baby, is the result of two stories that are not treated equally. On the one hand we have Luke and Sophie, two stereotyped, young and beautiful people, who fall in love at first sight with each other. On the other hand we have Ira, a WWII veteran that has his own epic love story to tell, that has shared with his wife Ruth years ago. While these two stories seem pretty much the same as both couples go through hard moments, the second one turned out to be way more interesting, it delivered more emotions and a better result. As for the first story, as if being clichéd wasn't enough, it's left aside, like no one gives a damn about it, therefore is hella boring.

So the idea of crossing time to present two love stories could have been interesting, but only if properly done, which is exactly what did not happen here. I don't know who's to blame, if Sparks for writing the book this way, or the screenwriter for adapting the book this way - no, I did not read the book and I don't plan on doing it.

The musical score was great and many times was more emotional than the actual acting, that is overall fine, with good performances from Jack Huston as young Ira, and Oona Chaplin as Ruth, a decent Scott Eastwood as Luke who has not a great chemistry with likable yet bad at acting Britt Robertson as Sophie.