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| STAR RATINGS EXPLAINED |
| Unmissable |
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| Tragic |
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| FILM DETAILS | Certificate
12A | | Cast
Zac Efron
Taylor Schilling
Blythe Danner. | | Directors
Scott Hicks. | | Screenwriters
Will Fetters. | | Running Time
101 minutes |
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The Lucky One
Unlucky everyone else
Plot
US Marine Logan (Efron) puts his survival through three tours in Iraq down to his lucky charm, a photo of a smiling woman he's never met. When he gets back to North Carolina he resolves to track down the mysterious lady. Review
Author Nicholas Sparks' weepie formula is becoming overly familiar. Here is another handsome, taciturn loner (Zac Efron), another melancholy Southern belle in distress (Taylor Schilling), another maudlin melodrama with a third-act death. This instalment in Sparks’ one-man genre shares its DNA with Dear John, with Efron as another unlikely warrior-poet. But this one at times wanders into unintentional comedy. Efron is a decent actor but reins it in to the point of nothing, and while Schilling is fine, it’s left to Blythe Danner as her feisty grandmother to bring any life to affairs. It looks gorgeous; Shine director Scott Hicks shoots America like it’s Eden, Efron walking from Colorado to North Carolina with nary a highway or mall in sight. But pretty pictures can’t distract from its faded clichés and lack of, ahem, spark.
Verdict
The Notebook may have had us blubbing but since then Nicholas Sparks adaptions have offered thin pickings for cinemagoers. For all Efron's boyish charms, this one could be the most ordinary of the lot.
Reviewed by Helen O'Hara
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