The Lucky One, the newest airbrushed pseudodrama based on the umpteenth bestselling Nicholas Sparks novel, immediately raises cackles of disbelief. War veteran Logan (Zac Enron) walks from his native Colorado to Louisiana to find the previously anonymous girl whose motivating photo he found in the rubble of his third tour in Iraq. The photo pledged “stay safe” while his thousand mile walk pledges more hogwash to come.
And there’s hogwash coming out of this movie’s ears. The girl, Beth (Taylor Schilling, no Meryl Streep) runs a kennel and since Logan happens to have his dog along for the walk, he ends up taking a job with her. Not that she wants to hire a mysterious drifter (he doesn’t tell her about the photo and how much it meant to keeping him together while in combat) but she has this witty grandmother, see. Enter Ellie (Blythe Danner), who hires the guy anyway since she seems to know what’s best, especially for Beth.
Beth has a young boy, Ben, who takes a shine to Logan. A glaring ex-husband/cop, Keith (Jay R. Ferguson) is along to start jealous trouble. The venerable Mark Islam composed the score. His presence is equivalent to having Thomas Keller take a shift as line cook at Olive Garden.
When Beth and Logan finally get around to the down and dirty, they make love with their clothes on since Sparks films aren’t about steamy sex nor certainly about any sort of reality other than an eerie celebration of nirvana as an utmost blandness (Ephron seems to endure more than enjoy the rainswept passion. Once Beth tosses aside her feckless initial reservations about Logan, their only problem remains Keith, a cartoon villain straight out of the Gomer Pyle Show realm. Any Southern cracker penchant for military man exceptionalism is trumped by Keith’s doggone envy of Logan and mistrust of Beth, who he still pops in on uninvited.
Redolent of all cliche-driven films, The Lucky One keeps its eye on overcoming the Major Obstacle, a seemingly insurmountable force with an impossibly dire consequence. Here it’s Keith’s threat to use his influence in the small town power structure to wrest total custody of Ben if Beth ups and shacks up with Logan. Needless to say, Keith’s character soon loses any of an already barely existent subtlety when he goes off the deep end and then some. Bad guys in films of this ilk certainly aren’t treated with an iota of ambiguity, but rather with a sledgehammer. Yelling “fire”in crowded theater is definitely prohibited, but screaming out loud less so, and you may well consider it.
As an antidote to the piffle, Danner does the I-told-you-so stuff rather well and something about Efron is more believable than the rest. Yet with barely a scintilla of real-life credibility, The Lucky One mucks around in dangerous territory. Trying to have its vision of fantasyland and also have that vision come up against the all too real emotional residue of war, its gears clash so grindingly it’s a film in desperate need of an oil change even as the Nicholas Sparks machine keeps firing on all cylinders.
3 Louisiana Kennels Gone Schmaltzy (out of 10)