The Best Of Me Film Review: Another Weepy Romantic Drama Based On A Nicholas Sparks Novel

THOSE WHO love movies based on Nicholas Sparks romantic novels like “The Notebook”, “Message in a Bottle”, “A Walk to Remember” and “Dear John” will surely enjoy “The Best of Me”. Like “Notebook”, this is a time-crossing story showing the lead characters in their younger and older selves. It’s about second chance at true love.

The lovers, Dawson (James Marsden) and Amanda (Michelle Monaghan), are high school sweethearts who drift apart and meet again after 20 years when a mutual friend, Tuck (Gerald McRaney), died. Tuck is Dawson’s second dad who acts like Cupid to them. Dawson is a quiet loner who is very bright (he’s seen reading a thick Stephen Hawking book) but chooses to have a blue collar job in an oil rig that explodes but which he miraculously survives. Amanda is a well to do housewife with a son who’s about to go to college and very sad about her marriage to an alcoholic workaholic (Sebastian Arcelus.)

The two ex-lovers learn at the start of the film that they inherit a beautiful cottage in the woods near a small but idyllic lake from Tuck. Flashback to 20 years earlier. The teenage Amanda is played by Liana Liberato (she and Monaghan somewhat look alike) and Dawson is played by Luke Bracey (who looks totally different from Marsden and who certainly doesn’t look like a teenage high school student but someone who’s doing post graduate studies). Liana aims to be a lawyer but gets infatuated with Luke who belongs to a family of white trash outlaws with an abusive father. It’s another rich girl-poor boy story and you know this will drive them apart.

What’s nice about the movie is that director Michael Hoffman (“Soapdish”, “Last Station”) permits his actors to inhabit the real heart of the story, from being a pair of young lovers who discover how much they’re crazily in love with each other, then lets us see how the 20 years of absence between them has changed them as individuals but still they cannot repress whatever it is that attracted them to each other in the first place. Suckers for this kind of ‘first love never dies’ story will surely swoon with Amanda and Dawson as they relive their feelings for each other. Both Marsden and Monaghan (we’re currently watching the acclaimed TV series “True Detective” and she’s also good there as Woody Harrelson’s wife) are wonderfully committed to their characters, no matter how maudlin their love story might be.

Those familiar with Nicholas Sparks creations know his stories aim to make you weep and almost always end tragically. And this is no exception, so be sure to bring a hanky, those who easily feel sentimental among you, as it doesn’t stray from Sparks’ original intentions.