The Lucky One

Oops, almost forgot! But then, considering the film, can you really blame me?

The Lucky One is exactly what you might think a romantic drama based on a book by Nicholas Sparks would be like. Or, at least, that's the theory. I have somehow managed to miss every film based on one of his books to date. That's right. Even the Notebook. Still, I was willing to give it a chance because I certainly like romantic dramas (at least in theory) and I didn't want to be yet another critic being sniffy about another Zac Efron film. Unfortunately, The Lucky One didn't exactly have me wanting to run out and rent the entirety of the Nicholas Sparks oeuvre. Worse, while I'm usually willing to defend Mr Efron after some very solid work in the likes of Charlie St Cloud and, most especially, Me and Orson Wells, he is very bland here. Of course, save for a spunky Blythe Danner, everything about the film is incredibly dull, if pleasantly so, so that's hardly surprising. At least, everything about the film starts off pleasantly dull but that's only before it becomes head-bangingly stupid in its final act. It's like Sparks (presumably he is the one to blame) realized two-thirds of the way through that he forgot to supply any source of conflict so he set up a succession of increasingly preposterous escalations, all revolving around what may be the year's biggest and silliest McGuffin, that leaves the film in a place far worse off than where it started. And the audience feeling a whole lot dumber than they were when they walked in.