Capitalising on the USA`s decade-long military forays into the Middle East, the film follows US Marine Logan Thibault (Zac Efron), who finds a photograph of a beautiful woman (Taylor Schilling), and deciding that they were fated to meet after the photo saves his life hunts her down after his three emotionally traumatic tours of duty. Apparently, creepy stalker-esque behaviour is permissible as long as its done accompanied by a suitably romantic score, with magic-hour lighting in the background.
Now, we`re not dissing the cinematographic aspect of the movie, by any means. Director Scott Hicks picked a good director of photography for this particular number, of that there can be no doubt. The set pieces, set in small-town North Carolina, range from the scenic to the downright beautiful. Unfortunately, visuals aren`t what make a good romance, and in this case, Hicks` screenplay adaptation of Sparks novel is a clear misfire.
In this writer`s humble opinion, the elements central to any romance can be boiled down to two fundamental questions: one, do we care about the characters? And two, what obstacles are they going to face? The Lucky One jettisons these aspects by discarding any progression or conflict in its narrative, meandering along with scarcely any tension until the movie is close to its conclusion.
To make matters worse, the characters portrayed are cookie-cutter thin, with hardly any dimensionality for viewers to sympathise with. To make matters even worse, Zac Efron is horrendously miscast as the strong, silent-type kinda guy, and comes across as unnatural as a kid using his dad`s shaving cream.
We like a good weepie as much as the next aspiring sensitive new age guy, but compared to masterpieces of its genre such as Shakespeare in Love and The Notebook The Lucky One pales in comparison, coming across as prettily packaged, emotionally hollow, and honestly insipid.
Summary: We laughed, we wept…oh wait, that was The Notebook.
Rating: 2/5 stars
Raphael Lim