User reviews

I really enjoyed this movie, but I must give a disclaimer... I never read the book, so I can't base my rating on how accurately the movie follows the book. I found that this movie had a lot of twists in it and wasn't as predictable as most other romance movies. (Also, it didn't hurt that James Marsden is great to look at.) I thought the actress who played young Amanda was really good, and I loved seeing the story as the two were growing up & also in modern times. I'm not sure why this movie has gotten so much hate... I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and would even pay to see it again if I get the chance.

I was not a fan of The Notebook, and would much rather watch this movie instead of The Notebook. Sure, the movies probably don't follow Nicholas Sparks' books super detailed, but they're good to watch if you're in the mood for a heartfelt love story.

This actually made me sad. It was corny and cliché like 80% of the time yes, but it was actually kind of great, and I liked it. Rare

I was looking for a nice romantic flick to bring my girlfriend to so it could set the mood for the evening. Well, that plan failed and I ended up bringing my ex to the movies to see it instead. It really touched me in a deep way that no other love story has in the past. Sounds kinda corny, but for me, it touched on some areas. Well, needless to say, we held hands all during the movie and more later.

Okay, so I read up on the reviews before coming to see this movie and they all made it sound like a boring box office flop, BUT reviews can be very deceiving because this was a diamond that was tarnished by viewers who had NO clue what a romantic flick this really is about! So my advice to you is to go and see it with an open mind and heart and let the movie just unveil itself to your heart and mind and see what happens... best wishes!

When my friend asked me out to see this film, I reluctantly agreed. I was very pleasantly surprised. My poor friend aged a lot over time, she looked for all of her life for a true love. She never found it. This film talks exactly about that. One of the lines mentioned is exactly that. Some people find true love, some look for it for whole of their lives and they never find it.

Acting was OK for this type of film. Actors really tried their best to make this film work. Congratulations to them.

Plot was nothing special, it was based on a book. It was OK for a romance film. I really liked it.

I recommend this film, especially if you are looking for a romance film.

... which may not necessarily be a good thing.

Oddly, you divide the two almost at the midway point, that is, the one hour mark.

The first movie is a really sweet love story about lost love. It features a lot of flashbacks but luckily the actors playing the flashbacks and the actors playing 'real time' are all very competent, do a great job,the script works well, and the audience has a fun ride.

If the first hour were a movie on its own, I would give it a very strong rating.

However almost at the turn of the second hour (two hours BTW is much too long for this story) the connection between audience and viewer (this important factor discussed in many of my IMDb reviews) starts to fade as many story complications set in. And the script becomes lost in the various arcs.

I will not go into the complications but let me say that by the "climax" of the last Act the viewer may wonder if he/she dozed off and woke up in front of the TV watching an episode of JUSTIFIED. Enough said.

If the second hour were a movie on its own, I would give it a very low rating.

As an entire movie as it now stands, this film can be a rough ride for the viewer, and that is not a good thing.

Notes:

* always happy to see Michelle Monaghan, an actress under-used these days. Real star quality.

* Liana Liberato has a nice career ahead and better still actually looks like a young Michelle Monaghan, which is more than I can say of the casting choices for the male leads

* here is a tip for casting directors. FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE. Help you avoid the problem of casting two actors playing the same role (one in flashback) WHO LOOK NOTHING AT ALL LIKE EACH OTHER

Nicholas Sparks is a very dramatic author. Most of his stories end in heartache if not all. He's not one of my favorite authors but I love the movies based on his books. I'm a sucker for old school romance.

This movie in particular is so close to my heart, it's the first movie my husband and I watched with our friends after our marriage. It's so romantic and so sad but a good wakeup call to those who always choose wrong in life especially in the matrimonial department.

After all it's not about money, wealth or other people. It's about the person you love and trust the most. The person that brings out the best of you.

The story line is worthless and you walk away hating the movie, because of the story line. Everything that can happen bad, happens to these two and in the end they are destroyed again......not one positive happens to them in this story. Books and movies are supposed to be entertainment. Yes you can have some bad in movies to, but the whole thing? It's like, you meet your love of your life and she dies, then she's reincarnated and you find each other again and you die and then the kids die and then the cheating husband walks away rich......it's like why would anyone want to watch this. This is not entertainment, this is solely an attempt to make a tear jerker on top of a tear jerker and all they succeed at is making you mad at how disturbingly sadistic the story line is destroying their lives over and over again.

So my movie theatre-working friend was getting off from work in the afternoon today and he wanted to see another movie before going to his sister's house to watch the New Orleans-Green Bay football game there. So this was what we ended up seeing. I once again decided to humor him and to tell the truth, this was quite enjoyable despite some familiar clichés like bad boy-liking-good girl-who-he-has-to-break up-with-because-of-his-roots (well, there was more than that but you get the idea). The fact this was filmed and takes place in our home state of Louisiana was a plus for me and my friend as we recognized some town names being mentioned and certain car window stickers in the film. Yes, it's based on a Nicholas Sparks book and it has what you'd possibly expect from him. Still, by the time it all ended, we were both touched by what happened. So on that note, The Best of Me is worth a look.

I wasn't expecting too much of this movie. I thought it's gonna be the same old chick flick, with a lot of clichés, but it wasn't. Well, partially it was, but somehow they managed to make it interesting and not that predictable. Of course, it has the classic high-school love, poor boy-rich girl, different lives, different paths and so on, but somehow they mixed up the things really fine. It has action, it has passionate love, great acting, interesting story, everything you are expecting from a love movie. I've seen all the movies based on Nicholas Sparks's novels, not because I'm a fan (I only read "The Notebook"), but everybody was talking about his novels and the films, so I was just curious and I end it up actually enjoying them. Great movies to watch with your friends at a sleepover.

I couldn't imagine what's the end of story 😢 I loved it.

I just experienced one of the most romantic stories I have seen in years. For those who like the tears to flow this is the magic one from Nicholas Sparks. James Marsden is a dreamy as ever, every time you look into his eyes, he just takes you away. The story unfolds at a lovely pace, and brings everything together as it unfolds. I thought The Notebook was very moving but this one takes you on an incredible journey.

Cheesy, lame, clichés all over...it's so bad that I can't understand how is it even possible! How can a director make so bad decisions. I don't get it.The actors are not convincing at all. Overall the acting was mediocre and the lines...my god...the dialogs are deplorable. All about this movie is bad. The soundtrack. The dialogs. The plot. The story. And what about the main character? when he was young he had brown eyes and a long face. Twenty years after he has rounded face and blue eyes. lol lol lol How can this be? how can this pass? And did I talk about the acting? so bad! and did I talk about the dialogues? And could it be any more chliched? I guess not.Ridiculous movie.

These are my ratings: Characters:8/10, Acting:8/10, Enjoyment:8/10, Ending:6/10, Overall:7/10 It was ok.

Nicolas Sparks novels have some devout fans but I doubt even the most ardent ones would say this is a successful translation of the story.

Dawson Cole (James Marsden) is an offshore oil rig worker. Amanda (Michelle Monaghan) is unhappily married with a young son. In 1992 when both were teenagers from different sides of the social divide both became star crossed lovers. At the time young Dawson who was estranged from his backwoods drug dealing family was kind of adopted by Tuck (Gerald McRaney.) A tragic incident tore the young couple apart. Now 21 years later, Tuck's death means they come together for his funeral and both discover that they still carry a torch for one another.

Like The Notebook there are parallel stories in two time streams. Confusion will arise because the younger actors look nothing like the older versions. It is like watching a different film. To yearn for the days when a film such as A League of Their Own went out of its way to cast actors that looked like their younger counterparts.

The other confusing aspects is that 1992 in this film seems to look much like 1962. It is like that the film-makers wanted to evoke some other time period or maybe this small town was definitely stuck behind the times with old cars just like Cuba.

The film wants to be a slushy romance between two people destined to be with each other. In the intervening two decades they have had problems moving on from their feeling for each other which actually sounds a little creepy.

Of course ghosts of the past drum up conflict and as the film neared the end even my wife piped up by saying this would be a really lame film if x,y & z happened as a twist.

Well what more could be said than the uninspired and lazy does take place. Sometimes a film deserves the label. Lame.

Nicholas Sparks ("A Lucky Man", "Dear John") is an author known for creating sugar-coated romances, filled with couples in love who break up and get back together throughout their lives, with the only difference being the dramas and tragedies that face and try to prevent the "perfect love" of the protagonists. In "The Best of Me", the adaptation does not deviate from Sparks' already saturated formula and gives us a film with beautiful photography, but a story that does not captivate. Directed by Michael Hoffman, we follow the story of Amanda (young Liana Liberato and adult Michelle Monaghan) and Dawson (young Luke Bracey and adult James Marsden), two teenagers who, in the early 90s, fell in love and experienced an intense romance. Separated by barriers that we will only discover during the projection and, therefore, it is not possible to mention them here, the fact is that 21 years later (not 20), the two meet again due to the death of a great mutual friend, in city where it all began. Distant for so long and having followed completely different paths due to countless circumstances, both will put the love they once felt for each other to the test, rekindling the long-extinguished flame.

The plot begins in the present day, when Dawson and Amanda, separated, receive a call informing them of the death of their old friend. With their names linked in Tuck's will, both are forced to return to their hometown and the predictable reunion is inevitable. The script alternates moments between flashbacks and the present day, gradually explaining to us the reasons for the couple's separation. Liana Liberato ("If I Stay"), who plays the teenage Amanda, is the only side that she really convinces, leaving Bracey's performance almost unpalatable. Without expression and with difficulties in showing emotions, the viewer is unable to obtain the much-needed identification with the characters created by Sparks.

When the scenes change to Marsden and Monaghan, the quality of the film improves, but it still doesn't save the weak script adapted by J. Mills Goodloe and Will Fetters. The film's photography, on the other hand, is beautiful, with the beautiful fields and lakes of the southern United States as its landscape. Perhaps the change in the cast (Paul Walker was supposed to play Dawson in the present day, but his death occurred before filming began) has somewhat harmed the work of director Michael Hoffman, who is unable to deliver a convincing story, especially coming after another highly successful adapted novel, "The Fault in Our Stars". Starting from an efficient and well-constructed narrative structure, the film unites past and present, intertwining the trajectory of the two in a beautiful game of cause and effect, with visual and thematic rhymes that gain more and more strength as the plot unfolds. Thus, small gestures and attitudes of a certain character in the present acquire a whole other connotation when contrasted with moments from the past. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the beautiful editing work carried out by Matt Chesse, who masterfully conducts this temporal "ping-pong", always with interesting scene passages, basically relying on fusions full of meaning and multiple layers.

Luke Bracey is not very convincing as the heartthrob who will win the heart of the beautiful and captivating Amanda by Liana Liberato, making the love shared between the two end up sounding a little forced and too "convenient", making such a timeline pale in comparison to the present. Bitter and conflicted played by Michelle Monaghan and James Mardsen. It's that teenage fairy tale that we're used to seeing in works of this genre; "you are my life" over there, "I can't live without you" over here, while they are faced with obstacles to overcome, usually involving their families, and here it is no different. Despite a sweet, confident and charismatic composition, Liberato struggles to give credibility to this couple alone.

In the present line, we are placed before two adults embittered by time trying to resolve past issues, which, despite not sounding very original either, is certainly something more interesting to follow, especially due to Marsden's competence, stamping once again her vocation for this heartthrob role in romantic films, and especially Monaghan, proving that she is still an undervalued actress in the market. Her excellent participation in the series "True Detective" also corroborates this thesis, accrediting her as a professional who deserved to receive more opportunities to embody dense and challenging characters. But even though Marsden and Monaghan have good chemistry together and serve as audience attractions, they are not, ultimately, the true protagonists of The Best of Me. This is because for most of the film we follow how the two met and how those were the first moments of their relationship, years ago. In these sequences, they are played by Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato, two young people on the rise in Hollywood, but completely unsuitable in these roles. In addition to not being physically similar to the older actors - while the women even have different hair colors, the difference between the men is even greater, as the younger one is bigger than the other - they lack greater rapport. Between them. It's difficult to believe in all that love they say they feel between each other, especially without conjunctions or arguments conducive to it.

There is no way to talk about this work without mentioning the melodramatic tone that fills every line of the script. Imagine that delicious chocolate cake, but with too much sugar. Everything is a reason to play sad music and tend the viewer to burst into tears. The actors, from the characters' adult phase, James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan, even manage to show a more realistic tone, different from the actors from the characters' teenage phase, Liana Liberato and Luke Bracey. We human beings have a romantic tendency to become familiar with love stories we see in the movies. This new project follows the same formula as other books that consecrated Nicholas Sparks. Who has never wanted to dance close to their loved one to the sound of that record player playing vinyl, to jump into the river and give beautiful smiles next to the woman they love, to say I love you and be reciprocated, to abandon everything for the great love of their life. "The Best of Me" doesn't add anything, it seems like many other films. With each passing year it becomes increasingly clear that it will be difficult for another "The Notebook" to appear, Sparks has already written his greatest work.

The reasons that unite the couple - as well as those that separate them - are as shallow as they are evident. He has a troubled father, violent cousins, and he wants to get away from it all. Tuck emerges as the one who will practically adopt him, offering a much-needed shelter and example. For her, however, nothing is missing, and her posture seems more like that of a spoiled and bored girl than that of a woman in search of true love. The tragedy that imposes itself on their path, gratuitous and treated almost with disregard, only has the function of pushing them apart. Therefore, when they meet again, it is a matter of minutes before they are together again. The other characters are too stereotypical, and the direction by Michael Hoffman - a veteran of the genre, responsible for titles such as "One Fine Day (1996)" and "Gambit (2012)" - is merely protocol. In short, there is yet another legitimate example of what Nicholas Sparks is capable of doing - for the better and worse that may mean. Recommended, therefore, only for the author's most ardent fans, and perhaps not even those can handle so much glucose. When the credits roll, the certainty is that

"The Best of Me" does not bring anything new. The script follows the expected pattern and does not present major twists in its plot, its greatest merit being to make the public curious about the reason why the protagonists were separated more than two decades earlier for a little longer. Even the soundtrack, which normally stands out in films of this genre, is weak and monotone, bordering on dispensable. Thus, despite an interesting narrative structure, the good actors involved, and the reasonable efficiency in establishing an emotional involvement with the viewer, "The Best of Me" ends up failing to overcome the limit of what it was conceived to be: just average.