The Longest Ride

Devotees of author Nicholas Sparks's work will no doubt be delighted with The Longest Ride's bonanza offering: two militantly preposterous love stories for the price of one! The first happens in the present day, when perky art student Sophia (Britt Robertson) sets eyes on Luke (Scott Eastwood), a swoonsome bull-rider with a tragic secret. But she's off to New York for a swanky internship in two months and he remains married to his championship dreams. Their relationship seems doomed until the pair rescue car-crash victim Ira (Alan Alda), a grumpy oldster with a barely disguised twinkle whose letters to his deceased wife, performed in flashback by Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin, chart their own marital struggles and, whaddayaknow, might contain some inspirational life lessons about true love and sacrifice. The leads are game enough, struggling bravely against a turgid screenplay with Chaplin giving the nearest thing to a performance while Eastwood proves that he's hogged the family's smouldering-in-jeans genes - yes, he's Clint's son. But much of the dialogue has the unmistakeable aroma of something that emerged from the wrong end of one of Luke's bovine opponents, David Tattersall's cinematography is, alternately, hideously pastel (the present) and aggressively syrup-hued (the 1940s) while George Tillman Jr's clod-hopping, paceless direction leaves the movie feeling way too long and not much of a ride.