The Longest Ride Characters- a critique by What The Flick

Full-text transcript of The Longest Ride review:

[00:00:01] What am I in for here without?

[00:00:12] Keep it here.

[00:00:14] Hello, welcome to the flick, Christy Alonzo, one of us will be shirtless by the end of this review because everyone gets hot naked in the longest ride. Please describe the latest Nicholas Sparks. Yes, yes. Weight of the screen

[00:00:28] Is so sparkly. OK, so Scott Eastwood is a bull rider and Britt Robertson is a college senior and they meet and fall in love. But she’s about to move to New York to pursue her dreams in the art world. And they’re not interesting enough to carry a movie. So they meet Alan Alda, who is supposed to be in his 90s. But it’s Alan Alda and he doesn’t really quite look that old. And they read a bunch of letters that he wrote to his wife back in the 40s, even though they’re the kind of letters where he just explains things, the two of them are together anyway. And don’t ask questions. Just take a look.

[00:00:59] I mean, I met a girl in Michigan. You meet girls all the time. You know,

[00:01:07] I love what I do because any piece was different than thinking it

[00:01:16] Come from such different worlds.

[00:01:24] You see that

[00:01:25] One? Call 911.

[00:01:33] I just came to drop this off.

[00:01:35] Would you get that from your car? I haven’t been able to read these for years.

[00:01:41] You want me to read them to you? On April 10th and 19th, we got the

[00:01:46] Country to face a burning

[00:01:48] Hate, my dearest friend. I remember that dress you wore even when I forgot my own name.

[00:01:56] I wish I could tell you it’ll all be happily ever after.

[00:02:00] Wasn’t that simple? Look, you need to stop, I can’t be with someone if every time they walk out the door, I don’t know if I’m going to see them again.

[00:02:13] Promise me you’ll come back. The price. I don’t want

[00:02:19] To make this work anymore.

[00:02:23] No, I love requires sacrifice. But it’s worth it.

[00:02:34] So it’s a very Nicholas Sparks, Nicholas Sparks for better and for worse, but I think if this is what you want, if you are after this. Yes.

[00:02:43] If you signed on for this, you know, this is what you’re right.

[00:02:46] And I think so I kind of can’t hit on it completely because trashing these kinds of films, they’re low hanging fruit. They’re easy to make fun of. Sure. But if you want it, this does it stuff right for its fans.

[00:02:57] You may not like what it delivers, but it does deliver it, right. Well, I will give you that. And I kind of you know, my problem with this movie is that it’s sort of to Nicholas Sparks movies. It’s there’s the one about the guy in the distressed flannel shirts and the beat up pickup truck. And then there’s the one about, you know, the old people and the flashbacks and the letters and

[00:03:18] Lessons we learn, the

[00:03:19] Lessons we learned. And I was much more interested in the old people in the 40s. You know, the flashbacks to Jack Houston and Oona Chaplin, a lot of son of daughter of granddaughter of in this movie. I thought their story was a lot more interesting, although even it was kind of whitewashed in that there are Jews in the Deep South in the 40s, and that’s never a problem.

[00:03:41] More like I had no idea. There’s like this thriving Jewish enclave in small town North Carolina.

[00:03:46] There may be there may well have been, but I think they would have occasionally heard from the local Klansmen or something, you know, but it’s. No, no, we never hear about that.

[00:03:54] Tony Scott had a really funny line in his review about how this is the first Nicholas Sparks film where anyone’s ever said good Chavez probably.

[00:04:02] Maybe the last you know, there’s a there’s a cool story about young Alan Alda and his wife and how they can’t have a family and instead they become art collectors and what and they get that part of it. Right. But but actually, if you want to see an actual story about a couple that spent their life collecting art, pick up Herb and Dorothy. It’s really good.

[00:04:25] She had an impeccable eye, too. She’s got. Yeah, Jackson Pollock and

[00:04:28] Exactly what they go to the Black Mountain College, which is a real thing. And that was kind of awesome. But then again, it bugged me because it is the kind of movie where if you are into abstract expressionism and contemporary art in the 1940s, then you’re cool and forward thinking and progressive and smart. And if you like contemporary art now, the way that Britt Robertson does, then you are a shill and a dupe because Scotties which shows up is like this is all

[00:04:54] Bullshit to me, is a real America right now. But I think that’s also meant to show, like, just how unwilling he is to be a part of her world. And that’s more of a poor reflection on him than it is on her.

[00:05:05] I mean, you could you can look at it either way, but I kind of feel like the movie is ultimately, you know, we’re never meant to look at him and think, oh, you you know, you hayseed, you’re being it’s not murky. Close by that. Oh, yeah, you’re right. Why are people going to pay fifty thousand dollars for them squiggles? Might you do that? You know,

[00:05:22] It’s very pretty.

[00:05:23] It is very pretty. Eastwood You know, I feel like I have retinal scanned his entire body because the camera just cannot stop, like ogling him.

[00:05:33] He he has a lot of his dad in him. He looks exactly like Clint Eastwood, like Rawhide era. Clint Eastwood.

[00:05:40] Yeah. The proud of you. He’s got the profile and the little voice crinkle and

[00:05:43] The smile at the caricature on the forehead. You know, he’s not terrible in this. I mean, he does what he needs to do it like the film as a whole. He does what he needs to do. He needs to be handsome and rugged and easy on the eyes. As the ever present bull riding Greek chorus informs us, he’s easy on the eyes and a magician on the board.

[00:06:03] Yeah, but I mean, it’s like, yes, you know, movies are always about pretty people and the camera likes looking at them, but the camera really likes looking. It’s good. I would like this movie is directed almost like this, like an underwear ad starring him with a song like Britt Roberts. It is sort of like, oh hey, over here. Like I

[00:06:22] Naked. I’ll take my top off.

[00:06:24] Please fill

[00:06:25] Me. However, OK, I’m going to play devil’s advocate again. I’m going to say the reason that his shirt is off so much is because he has all of these really horrible scars from being gored by this.

[00:06:37] And they’re so awful to look

[00:06:39] Underneath underneath the pack. I have to say, though, I think that’s maybe how you can justify him having his shirt off. It’s North Carolina and it’s hot or it’s raining or it’s raining and you have to take your shirt off to get in the showers.

[00:06:56] You have to take your distressed flannel shirt off because it’s so warm.

[00:07:00] I like when he puts her on the fake bull in the barn and then it starts raining like all this stuff happens at once, like a checklist of cliches. You know, they have a nice chemistry. They do. Their story is not nearly as interesting as the jacket and a chaplain was. She is lovely. She is vibrant. They have a really nice chemistry. I always like him. And there’s sort of a she. Yeah. And this sort of lovely she has great vibrancy about her. But then there’s something about Jack Houston, which always strikes me as kind of timeless. Yeah. When you see him in this role with the hair. With the clothes. Something about his features, if that makes sense and they have a nice connection with you.

[00:07:37] I didn’t quite buy that he ages into becoming Helen older. But, you know, whatever

[00:07:41] You get to have Alan Alda, sure it does.

[00:07:44] And he’s fine. The letters thing annoyed me a little because the letters were so declarative. It was like, OK, you could you could do you could do a plot about finding the old love letters. But I couldn’t figure out why is he would write. He was simply going to write your letters from across town, writing letters about what they just did.

[00:08:06] I think he dropped her off after their date and he picks up the tab in the pen. And before he leaves, he’s sitting in the front of the car like, wow, that was an awesome kiss just now. Like, totally obvious, like marriage.

[00:08:16] Just keep a diary. You know, the

[00:08:18] Guy would have made a lot more sense. Yes, I think so. Why does he have the letters? She’s eventually no longer with us. Why does he have the multiple of letters? Because they

[00:08:26] Live together. So we have talked like somewhere. Anyway, whatever. We’re not picking for nit picking. You know, if you if you think I don’t want to see this movie, then you’re right. And if you think, oh, I can’t wait to see this movie, then you’re probably also.

[00:08:38] Yeah, I don’t think this is going to really convert any new Nicholas Sparks fans, but it is it is a little long. It is two hours and eight minutes long, does not need to be, but is a pleasant enough diversion. And like it’s not I wasn’t miserable. I cared what would happen to them.

[00:08:55] I did some I never bought the big quandary of, oh, you know, how she wants her art and he wants to raise cattle, I thought moved to Marfa. Right.

[00:09:05] Or live someplace like in New York. And he she takes the train in from somewhere upstate. Right. It’s very rural. Once you get past Westchester County, totally like they could make it happen,

[00:09:17] Move to Manhattan and he can become an underwear model because Holy Grail

[00:09:20] That he would agree is contri of the notion that they cannot be together. But you have to have some kind of translation. And so there you go. Yeah, not terrible. What’s your number?

[00:09:29] It’s a five point eight. Yeah. I mean, it’s not the worst. It’s it is what it is, you know, as much as it can be. Yeah.

[00:09:36] I’m going to say a six. So our average is a five point nine. I will say that it’s not nutty enough. Like in a lot of Nicholas Sparks movies, there is some big twist, like someone’s been dead the whole time or something like that, or someone didn’t have cancer or something or someone did and is not dead anyway. So I or

[00:09:52] They’re the ones in the in the new book,

[00:09:55] It’s I, I did not have a nutty enough experience here. There’s a twist which is quite obvious that oh, the thing that’s going to happen, you can see from a mile away,

[00:10:04] I didn’t see it coming because when it came I was like, oh really? That’s, that’s what we’re doing.

[00:10:09] There’s an art connection that’s on it. All right. So I’m so go. It’s not really terrible ghost

[00:10:15] That’s healthy for the poster

[00:10:17] By.