When the Kindle first came out, people found it liberated them to read trashy books free of neighborly judgment. There should be a similar bag-over-the-head disguise given to viewers of Nicholas Sparks movies, which traffic shamelessly in a set of romance tropes, reassembled slightly each time.
Luke Bracey and Liana Liberto star as young Dawson and Amanda in the flick.Photo: Gemma LaMana
You'll have your hero who does manual labor by day and reads serious books by night (here it's James Marsden, on an oil rig, with a Stephen Hawking tome). There'll be a free-spirited young woman, with at least one rich, mean parent, whose love will burn for him despite their cruel separation (this one is Liana Liberato, who grows up into Michelle Monaghan, their sole shared resemblance a long mane of wavy hair). And don't get me started on the gorgeous bayou houses, the handwritten letters, the post-coital breakfasts on wraparound porches. The sunlight, never glaring, always dappled.
The particulars in "The Best of Me," for what it's worth, are that teen sweethearts Dawson (initially Luke Bracey, who looks craggier than the Marsden he grows up into) and Amanda (Liberato/Monaghan) are reunited after two decades by the death of an old friend (Gerald McRaney). Through a lawyer, he asks them to come to his house and scatter his ashes.
She's unhappily married; he's just cheated death after an explosion on the rig. You get the feeling something just might start up between them again.
It seems that the spark is still there for Dawson (Marsden) and Amanda (Monaghan).Photo: Gemma LaMana
Via flashback, we see their early-'90s selves falling in love despite his dirtbag, abusive dad (Sean Bridgers) and her condescending, country-club one. Dawson's taken in by a kindly old coot named Tuck (McRaney), who becomes the father he never had. But tragedy strikes; the lovers are torn apart. When they meet up again, she's chilly — but her eyes still light up at the sight of him in a motor oil-stained tee.
Like the artificially sweetened junk food it is, this all goes down pretty easily. Bracey makes a winning greaser type, and you root for the couple. But neither really has any edge: They're fundamentally nice people to whom bad things happen, and that makes them sympathetic but not all that interesting.
The film's final act does make one surprising move, which is to completely out-schmaltz itself. Director Michael Hoffman once made the great comedy "Soapdish," so he must get why audiences will be giggling rather than choking up — which is the reaction I imagine Sparks intended as he wrote the scene longhand, by candlelight, on his wraparound porch.
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