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Endless Love

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Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde in Endless Love (Universal Pictures)
Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde in Endless Love (Universal Pictures)
What it's about:

The story of a privileged girl and a charismatic boy whose instant mutual desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

What we thought:

…oh right, I need to be say a bit more. Well if you have seen The Notebook and any other Nichols Sparks-inspired true-love-don’t-die plots, then you have seen Endless Love. At one point I actually think they use the same famous lines as Ryan Gosling’s swoon-worthy speech in the rain.

A sad rich kids still grieving for her lost brother finds love in the arms of a poor gentleman and lo and behold the father does not approve. At one point the dad even gets a restraining order against loverboy (overkill much?) but as expected accepts him and the daughter’s relationship (Spoiler? Please, everyone with half a brain cell sees that coming.)

Deeper than that you’re not going to get. The story is so drawn out you could rinse the soppy plot devices if twisted hard enough and not original in any sense. It going up and down – then they’re together, then they’re not, then she gives up a summer internship to be with him (shock horror!) – it’s worse than any young adult TV series.  I admit there were scenes where I felt like tearing up maybe but these were cheap emotional shots at the audience that had no real merit.

As for the actors themselves, I couldn’t fault them too much. The two leads, Gabrielle Wilde and Alex Pettyfer (Magic Mike), looks like they were casted mostly for their looks (at least the movie looked pretty) with wooden performances and Wilde playing out a similar character as that of her role in Carrie. Bruce Greenwood outplays everyone as the overprotective father, but that’s mostly due to a veteran actor trying to make do with a boring script. The brother is played by the actor who played the freaky upper class psychopath in The Purge, Rhys Wakefield, but in Endless Love I just felt he needed a slap most of the time to quit his whining over his psycho dad.

I guess if you are into those soppy love-against-all-odds stories, you might like Endless Love. But, and I can’t believe I am saying this, you are better off re-watching The Notebook (which I despise) for the hundredth time than spending money on this nonsense. Where for art thou, decent Romance movies?



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