The Best of Me

There are a few crucial necessities that a Nicolas Sparks story needs.  It helps if you have two lovers who come from different walks of life.  That way, they can be hopelessly in love, yet surrounded by people who refuse to let them be happy, simply because he/she "is not one of us".  You also need a lot of music montages built around the young lovers frolicking in water or sun-drenched fields of flowers.  Don't forget to add some tragedy to the mix.  A car accident, a sudden case of cancer, or a wise old father figure passing on usually works.

The Best of Me, the latest Sparks novel to come to the screen, is a greatest hits album of the author's stories, as it contains all of these elements.  I couldn't help but notice, however, that something seemed a little off.  There is something very workmanlike here.  All the pieces are in place, but they feel like they're being checked off a list by the filmmakers rather than adding to the story.  The movie does what we expect, but that's as far as it goes.  It never digs deeper than the surface for its emotions.  I was ready to get caught up in the sentimentality of the film, only to find that it just didn't really want to make much of an effort.  You know a love story is in trouble when you don't care about the two central characters.  You know it's doomed when you start asking what they even see in each other. 

The love story of Dawson and Amanda is told in two different time periods, with the film cutting back and forth between both storylines, sometimes seemingly at random.  The two meet as teenagers back in 1992, where they are played by Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato, respectively.  In the present, as adults, they are played by James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan.  The two are reunited as adults when an old man who used to take care of Dawson named Tuck (Gerald McRaney) suddenly passes away, and brings them together.  The two obviously have a long history and a lot of deep pain between each other, evidenced by how uncomfortable and awkward Marsden and Monaghan appear in a lot of their early scenes together.  Or, maybe that's just them realizing too late what kind of script they've gotten into.  Through a series of drawn out flashbacks, we learn their story.

The two met as teens when Amanda started trying to come up with ways to flirt with the young Dawson.  They're both attracted to each other, but wouldn't you know it, they come from different worlds.  She's rich and popular, and he lives in a shack with a bunch of violent rednecks who look like rejects from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre family reunion.  Dawson leaves his abusive yokel father behind, and moves in with old man Tuck.  Now the two young lovers can be happy with each other with no worries or cares.  Here's where I started to notice something was a little wrong.  We never really learn anything about the relationships of these characters.  We don't get to see Dawson and Tuck bond, and we never get a true sense of the relationship between Dawson and Amanda, other than they're physically attracted to each other.  Sure, they fulfill all the requirements we expect.  The young lovers have wistful and romantic talks atop a water tower at sunset, and Dawson walks around with his shirt off as much as possible.  But it takes so much more than these basic elements to create a winning on-screen relationship.

Even the element of danger to their relationship seems undeveloped.  Dawson's redneck clan show up now and then, cackling evilly as if they know they are one dimensional villains in a romantic melodrama.  They show up periodically to cause trouble, but never come across as a developed threat.  Likewise, there's the required scene where Amanda's father takes young Dawson aside, and tries to bribe him with paying off his college expenses if he will break up with his daughter.  This scene literally comes out of the blue, as we have never met her parents before now, nor have we gotten a hint that there was any trouble with them dating.  It becomes all the more unnecessary when we realize that the scene has absolutely no point, as the father is never seen again, nor is the issue of her parents being against the relationship ever brought up again.  The scene exists simply because the movie knows the audience is waiting for it.  Sure, it gives us what we're waiting for, but it feels hollow and unwanted.

Through reasons that I will not reveal, young Dawson ended up serving an eight year prison sentence, and Amanda was forced to move on with her life.  In the present day, when the two are reunited, Amanda is unhappily married to a jerk, has a son on his way to college, and a daughter who died of cancer when she was very young.  Dawson has been working on an oil rig, survived an accident and...Well, that's really all we learn about what he's been up to, other than the fact that he's been pining away for Amanda all these years.  As the two spend time together, we expect the flames of passion to be rekindled, but again, there seems to be little to no reason for this to happen.  It simply happens, we get some montages of the lovers frolicking, and then Amanda is forced to choose between the rugged and handsome love of her life, or the cold and cynical jerk who ignores her that she's married to.  I don't want to spoil too much, but the final moments are built around one contrived crisis after another to the point that I just wanted the movie to be done with.

I think the problem is that there is no heart behind The Best of Me.  It's all manipulation, and no emotion.  At its very core, a romantic melodrama succeeds and fails on the couple at the middle of it, and whether or not we want to see them get together.  This movie couldn't seem to care less.  It slaps two different pairs of attractive actors together to play the main characters at different points in their life, but it doesn't give them anything to do or a chance to build a touching on-screen relationship.  It feels like the actors could have chemistry if the script had simply been written in such a way that it gave them something to work with.  The movie includes all the right elements and romantic images, but it feels mechanical and thrown together, because there is just nothing at all behind it.

Walking in, I thought it was strange that the studio was releasing this film in the weeks leading up to Halloween instead of Valentine's Day.  But, as I was watching the movie, I noticed something strange.  The adult Dawson and Amanda kept on saying they hadn't seen each other in 21 years.  Do the math.  The flashbacks are set in 1992, which would mean the present day scenes are set in 2013.  My guess is that this is a telltale sign that the film has been sitting on the shelf for a while, and the studio just decided to dump it out.  So, not only did the filmmakers not care about making an emotional love story, but the studio didn't even care about the proper time to release it.

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