the longest ride movie review

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After squirming through the all-too-accurately-titled “The Longest Ride,” I think I have finally cracked the code on what makes these increasingly cockamamie films based on Nicholas Sparks novels tick.

They might be classified as romantic dramas. But don’t be fooled. In reality, they are sci-fi adventures that unfold in an alternate universe. It’s a place—let’s call it Sparks-landia—where young couples will often encounter a parallel pair of oldsters whose situation somehow reflects and affects theirs. Where woo will be pitched while being drenched by a water source. Where simple logic does not apply, beatitudes will be pronounced at regular intervals (“Love requires sacrifice...always” is the lesson here) and coincidences involving letters and dead spouses regularly occur. Where eventual plot twists are often telegraphed from the moment the opening credits begin and relationship barriers that could be easily resolved are instead treated as if they were the iceberg that struck the Titanic. 

You heard of “ Star Wars ”? Films based on Sparks' books could be called “Star-Crossed Wars.”

The two-hour-plus “Ride,” No. 10 in the series, at least offers a few intriguing new variations on the usual Sparks formula of pretty bland people falling in love against a backdrop of verdantly green landscapes most often located in coastal North Carolina. For instance, this might be one of the few movie plots in history to prominently feature both bull riding and art appreciation.

How are they tied together, you might ask? Not with a bedazzled lasso. Instead, college sorority sister and art history major Sophia ( Britt Robertson , who also stars in the summer tentpole “Tomorowland”) and cowboy Luke ( Scott Eastwood ) meet cute at a rodeo event—he drops his hat, she picks it up—and instantly take a shine to one another.

The former bull-riding champ is on the comeback trail, as we are told time and again, after suffering a great injurious fall while competing atop a snorting demon of a beast called Rango, a breakout performance to be sure. You ain’t seen nothing if you haven’t witnessed a bull buck and rear up in a circle with slo-mo snot flying out of its nose. Meanwhile, this Jersey-bred gal is heading to the Big Apple in two months for a gallery internship. He is a whole lot country—shucks, he even brings a grocery-store-quality bouquet of flowers to their first date and serves her BBQ out of the bag al fresco—and she is a whole lot of anything but.

But with Luke having to be around bulls to make a living and such livestock being fairly scarce in Manhattan save for Wall Street, he and Sophia don’t seem to have much of a future. But then fate, which is never more fickle than when it materializes in a Sparks film, intervenes. As the twosome head home in Luke’s red Ford pickup truck (product placement, including Apple and Budweiser, is rampant in Sparks-landia), they happen upon a car that slid off the road. Inside is an elderly man that they transport, along with a basket filled with old letters, to the hospital.

He turns out to be Ira Levinson ( Alan Alda , doing a crotchety geezer type with a twinkle in his eye as best as he can what with breathing tubes in his nose), a widower who has his own account of the heart to share that will ultimately provide the key to their futures. Lo and behold, diversity rears its head in Sparks-landia in the form of flashbacks featuring Ira’s Jewish heritage and that of his wife to be, Ruth, a cultured Austrian Word War II refugee making a new life in America. Sophia pays regular visits to Ira’s bedside, and together they read aloud his letters to Ruth. Why he sent these missives to someone he saw daily and why he felt compelled to describe episodes that just occurred are not explained except for the fact we are, after all, in Sparks-landia. 

Ira (played in these remembrances by Jack Huston , grandson of legendary director John, who looks nothing like Alda—another Sparks tradition) and Ruth ( Oona Chaplin , granddaughter of silver-screen icon Charlie) eventually marry, though their bliss is interrupted by his call to military duty overseas. A battlefield wound leaves Ira unable to give Ruth the large family of her dreams. In compensation, he buys her modern paintings by great painters who attend the nearby Black Mountain College to fill the walls of their home.

While their circumstances take a rather unduly melodramatic turn once there is no wall space left, Huston and especially the rather infectious Chaplin are a more interesting match to observe than Robertson and Eastwood. Instead, what director George Tillman Jr . (the director of “ Soul Food ” and “Men of Honor,”  who obviously studied the Sparks movie handbook) counts on to liven up the current-day passages are his male star’s genes—he is the spitting blue-eyed image of his daddy, who happens to be named Clint—and drop-dead-gorgeous looks. While Robertson flashes a PG-13 breast, it is Eastwood’s right nipple that gets a close-up in a bed scene. 

Still, the only thing that all this macho beefcake objectifying achieved was to give me a hankering to watch “Rawhide” reruns and admire the real deal, instead.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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The Longest Ride (2015)

Rated PG-13 for some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action

139 minutes

Scott Eastwood as Luke Collins

Britt Robertson as Sophia Danko

Lolita Davidovich as Linda Collins

Melissa Benoist as Marcia

Jack Huston as Young Ira

Oona Chaplin as Ruth

Alan Alda as Ira

Amy Parrish as Andrea Lockerby

• George Tillman Jr
• Nicholas Sparks
• Craig Bolotin

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The longest ride, common sense media reviewers.

Formulaic but still romantic Sparks adaptation gets steamy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Love conquers all. You can't always plan your

Luke and Sophia may be very different, but they do

Cringe-inducing scenes that show a bull rider gett

A woman undresses in the shower while a man watche

Occasional swearing includes "damm," &qu

Brands seen include Sony, Ford, iPhone, Jack Danie

Social drinking at bars. College students of legal

Parents need to know that The Longest Ride , while somewhat charming, is your standard-issue Nicholas Sparks romance. It tackles some pretty weighty subjects, including death, infertility, and traumatic injuries. The amount of romance/steamy stuff is fairly on par with The Notebook -- in particular,…

Positive Messages

Love conquers all. You can't always plan your future, but if you commit to the things you love, it will work out. Serious themes/subjects addressed include death, infertility, and the impact of traumatic injury.

Positive Role Models

Luke and Sophia may be very different, but they don't use their differences as a wedge to drive them apart. They try to appreciate what's unique and wonderful about each other.

Violence & Scariness

Cringe-inducing scenes that show a bull rider getting thrown and severely injured. A man is shown unconscious and bleeding behind the wheel of a crashed car.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A woman undresses in the shower while a man watches. They're shown kissing and presumably have sex in the shower; viewers see their bare backs/butts and quick glimpses of her breast (from the side and front). Other scenes include women in their underwear/showing cleavage and shirtless men (plus another quick shot of backside). Innuendo and references to sex. Passionate kissing and more implied sex; one montage shows a woman on top of a man (moves, sounds, but no nudity). Abstract painting of a nude woman.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional swearing includes "damm," "hell." and "bulls--t."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Brands seen include Sony, Ford, iPhone, Jack Daniel's, Wrangler, and Dickies.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking at bars. College students of legal drinking age are shown holding cups of beer.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Longest Ride , while somewhat charming, is your standard-issue Nicholas Sparks romance. It tackles some pretty weighty subjects, including death, infertility, and traumatic injuries. The amount of romance/steamy stuff is fairly on par with The Notebook -- in particular, there's a scene featuring a couple having sex in the shower (bare backsides are shown, plus a quick glimpse of her breast from the side/front). Also passionate kissing, other scenes of implied sex, and some cleavage/underwear shots. Swearing includes "bulls--t" and "hell," and there's some social drinking. Since the story involves bull riding, expect some cringe-inducing scenes in which a rider is thrown and injured; there's also a car crash that leaves the driver hurt and bloodied. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (7)
• Kids say (18)

Based on 7 parent reviews

This movie is fantastic! Even my 12 year old boy enjoyed it!

I read his books, what's the story.

Luke Collins ( Scott Eastwood ) is a champion bull rider who's thrown off his game, literally, by a massive injury he sustains in the arena. A year later, he's staging a comeback when he runs into Sophia ( Britt Robertson ), a college senior who's majoring in art and is ready to leave Greensboro, N.C., for a gallery internship in New York. Drawn to each other despite their differences, Luke and Sophia decide to not pursue a relationship because she's leaving in two months. But when they pass by a car accident and rescue an old man ( Alan Alda ) and his cache of love letters to his wife, Luke and Sophia's trajectories shift direction.

Is It Any Good?

Not to be flip, but it would be easy to pick on THE LONGEST RIDE. As critics have pointed out before, movies based on Nicholas Sparks stories aren't exactly known for their scintillating dialogue and surprising plot lines. In this respect, The Longest Ride conforms to expectations, including the requisite dual stories of two couples, a subject Sparks has certainly mined before. And yes, it's set in North Carolina.

But here's where The Longest Ride diverges from the Sparks-movie norm: Surprisingly, it's somewhat compelling, with lead actors who share a chemistry that approaches, if not meets or surpasses, that of the leads in Sparks' most famous book-turned-movie, The Notebook . Though Eastwood doesn't have the soulfulness of Ryan Gosling , nor Robertson the timelessness of Rachel McAdams , the stars do have such a strong rapport that they manage to make the film interesting and watchable. That the incomparable Alan Alda decided to do this movie is somewhat puzzling, but he's so lovely in it that it's yet another reason to watch.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how The Longest Ride depicts love and romance. Is this what a relationship is "supposed" to be like? Why or why not?

Nicholas Sparks' movies often feature a young couple who learn about love and life from an older couple. Do you think this is a cliche, or is there something universal about young people learning from those who've come before them?

Do movies like this perpetuate an overly romanticized notion of marriage? How does it handle the serious subject of infertility?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 10, 2015
• On DVD or streaming : July 14, 2015
• Cast : Scott Eastwood , Britt Robertson , Alan Alda
• Director : George Tillman Jr.
• Inclusion Information : Black directors
• Studio : Twentieth Century Fox
• Genre : Romance
• Topics : Book Characters , Horses and Farm Animals
• Run time : 139 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action
• Last updated : March 30, 2022

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Review: In ‘The Longest Ride,’ the Nicholas Sparks Brand Endures

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Movie Review: ‘The Longest Ride’

The times critic a. o. scott reviews “the longest ride.”.

By A.O. Scott

• April 9, 2015

On the Box Office Mojo website, “The Longest Ride” is described in three words: “Brand: Nicholas Sparks.” That may be all you need to know. The film, directed by George Tillman Jr. ( “Soul Food,” “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete” ), is the latest screen adaptation of work by an author whose stamp is unmistakable. To those familiar with his novels — and, more relevant to our purposes here, with the seacoast-and-sunlight, white-people-kissing-in-the-rain movies they have inspired — Mr. Sparks’s name evokes a genre, an aesthetic, a swoony, saccharine, weirdly compelling gestalt.

A Nicholas Sparks movie is a romantic melodrama in which the road to enduring love is paved with complications, some preposterous, some life-threatening. The setting is usually North Carolina (unless tax incentives in other states inspire a change). In addition to coastal sunsets and kisses in the rain, you can expect most of the following things: an atmosphere of implicitly but not doctrinally Christian spirituality; a young couple from two different worlds (though both are white); at least one medical crisis; a death; a handful of bad characters whose badness is not quite visible to the main couple until it’s too late. These can be rival suitors, faithless friends, snooty relatives or just plain meanies. Their job is to add drama, and to collaborate with the unseen hand of fate to keep the plot in frantic motion.

“ The Longest Ride ” is a bit of an anomaly in that it is almost entirely free of villains, apart from a fearsome bull named Rango. It’s nothing personal, of course. At the start of the movie, Rango throws a young rider named Luke Collins (Scott Eastwood), causing serious (though not looks-compromising) injury and derailing Luke’s ambitions to become the top bull rider on the rodeo circuit. It’s important to note here that Luke is motivated less by the drive for glory or sponsorship lucre than by the need to keep his family ranch going after the death of his father. Speaking of fathers, Mr. Eastwood’s resemblance to the younger, “Rawhide”-era incarnation of his own dad is downright uncanny: the line of the jaw, the hint of a smile, the as yet squintless blue eyes.

At a competition a year after the Rango incident, those peepers connect with a pair of baby blues belonging to Sophia Danko (Britt Robertson), an art history major at Wake Forest University who has tagged along with some of her sorority sisters hoping to see “the hottest guys.” Not that Sophia is that kind of girl, any more than Luke is the kind of fellow who would be led astray by the rodeo groupies who fill the stands. He’s an old-fashioned guy, the kind who insists on buying the drinks and making the first phone call and who shows up for his first date with flowers and a plan for a moonlight lakeside barbecue picnic.

But as I said: different worlds. Sophia, the daughter of Polish immigrants who grew up in New Jersey — her background may be the single least believable thing in the whole movie, which is saying a lot — has an internship lined up at a Manhattan art gallery. Luke is committed to staying on Rango’s back for eight seconds even if it kills him. (Which it might!) What kind of future could they have together?

Of course you and I know the answer perfectly well — it involves kissing under a spray of water — though the events that reveal it are beyond ordinary powers of prediction. But the obstacles along the way seem trivial enough to make the story of their relationship fairly tedious, despite the charm and sincerity of the actors. Luckily, they meet Ira Levinson (Alan Alda), a widower whose chronicle of monogamous bliss is the mirror and prophecy of their own. As Ira recovers from a car accident, he reads from a collection of letters recounting his courtship and marriage. It’s not quite clear why he wrote so many letters to a woman he saw every day — letters that sometimes seem to narrate what they did together just a few hours before the time of composition — but it’s sweet that he saved them.

My memory is not always as keen as it should be, but in my long and rich acquaintance with the Nicholas Sparks cinematic brand I don’t think I have ever heard one character wish another “Good Shabbos.” Ira and his bride, Ruth — played in flashbacks by Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin, grandchildren of cinema royalty — are both Jewish, he the son of a small-town tailor in North Carolina, she a cultured and artistic refugee from Vienna. Different worlds. They meet in 1940. He goes to war and returns home with an inconvenient wound. Unable to have children, Ira and Ruth collect art, traveling to nearby Black Mountain College to buy paintings by real-life artists.

The mid-20th-century avant-garde is as unexpected a presence in this kind of movie as the Hebrew prayer book, and these exotic elements — along with a remarkably pedigreed cast — give “The Longest Ride” the dollop of specialness that is a brand requirement. “The Last Song” had Miley Cyrus and baby sea turtles. “Nights in Rodanthe” had the word Rodanthe. “Dear John” and “The Lucky One” had the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. “The Notebook” had Gena Rowlands and the wettest kiss ever. “A Walk to Remember” had ... honestly I forget. Someone put together a listicle! That’s the kind of criticism this brand was made for.

“The Longest Ride” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Sex: hot, monogamous and discreetly edited.

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Film Review: ‘The Longest Ride’

Two sets of star-crossed lovers weather an onslaught of personal crises in North Carolina. Yes, it's time for another Nicholas Sparks adaptation.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

• Film Review: ‘Black Mass’ 9 years ago
• Film Review: ‘The Runner’ 9 years ago
• Film Review: ‘Straight Outta Compton’ 9 years ago

As spring perennials go, a new Nicholas Sparks movie has come to seem as inevitable as tax day and allergy season, and only mildly less irritating to the senses. Though the character names and model-perfect faces may change (ever so slightly), the place (coastal North Carolina) remains the same, as do the trials and tribulations facing the star-crossed lovers who traverse its shores. The formula is by now as proven (and critic-proof) as Marvel or Tyler Perry — so why tinker with it in the least? Rest assured, “The Longest Ride” does nothing of the sort as it parallels the fates of two couples from different eras navigating the usual Sparks-ian gauntlet of war, class relations, cataclysmic accidents and life-altering medical conditions. Appealing performances by a trio of second- and third-generation Hollywood kids keep this three-hankie twaddle more bearable than it deserves, but “Ride” will surely go the longest with audiences for whom this is not their first Sparks rodeo.

Based on Sparks’ 2013 novel of the same title, “The Longest Ride” may be most notable for featuring the first lead performance by Scott Eastwood , the youngest son of Clint (who cast him in supporting roles in “Gran Torino” and “Invictus”) and an uncanny doppelganger for his father as a “Rawhide”-era contract player — a bit less squinty and gravelly-voiced, but with an effortless rugged charisma that also, at times, recalls the late Paul Walker. He’s comfortably cast as one of Sparks’ favored man’s men, a professional rodeo rider named Luke Collins, seen in the movie’s early moments getting ejected in particularly brutal fashion from a bucking bronc called Rango (credited “as himself”) and landing within a few inches of his life.

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That opening echoes the greatest of all rodeo movies, Nicholas Ray’s “The Lusty Men” (1952), in which Robert Mitchum’s injured ex-rider becomes reluctant mentor to a rising young star (Arthur Kennedy). But here, real cowboys like Luke don’t let things like a traumatic head injury keep them down, especially when there’s a family farm and widowed mother (a very good Lolita Davidovich) to support. So, one year later, he’s back in the saddle again, where he catches the eye of Sophia ( Britt Robertson ), a Wake Forest art-history major on the eve of graduating and starting an internship with a tony New York gallery.

Soon, a summer fling has sprung (Sparks doesn’t really do winter), and their first date is a doozy: dinner followed by an unscheduled stop in a roadside ditch — not so Luke can cop a feel, but so he can rescue the disoriented elderly man (Alan Alda) who’s crashed his now-burning car during a heavy downpour. Sophia pitches in too, rescuing a box of old letters from the passenger seat just in the nick of time. And the stage is set for one of Sparks’ bifurcated then-and-now narratives, in which the lessons of the past help to guide the action of the present.

So far, so “The Notebook,” and (like almost everything Sparks does) so very WASP. But lo and behold, “The Longest Ride” turns out to be the author’s salvo to the diversity crowd. The Alda character is revealed as one Ira Levinson, a Jewish nonagenarian whose coveted letters tell of his 60-year romance with wife Ruth ( Oona Chaplin ), an Austrian emigre who arrived in America at the onset of World War II. And as Sophia reads the letters aloud to a recovering Ira, that love story plays out in sepia-toned flashbacks rendered with all the lived-in period feel of a Restoration Hardware doorknob.

Screenwriter Craig Bolotin (“Black Rain”) and director George Tillman Jr. (“Soul Food,” “Faster”) lay on the Judaism thick but unconvincingly, as if cultural specificity could be measured in phlegmatic Borscht Belt accents and references to Shabbos. Alda, Chaplin and Jack Huston (who plays the young Ira) may be the least likely onscreen Jews since Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell played Polish-Jewish brothers in the Holocaust drama “Defiance,” while the raven-haired, olive-skinned Chaplin (daughter of Geraldine and the Chilean cinematographer Patricio Castilla) also looks about as Austrian as Frida K. When the movie arrives at a couple of scenes set during Friday services at the local synagogue, Tillman shoots them as if they were some exotic tribal ritual. And though the year is 1940, and Ruth’s reasons for fleeing Europe patently obvious, the name Hitler is never uttered once. (The movie’s credited “Jewish studies consultant” may wish to omit this one from her resume.)

Yet, despite its raging inauthenticity, the past proves more engaging than the present in “The Longest Ride,” in part because there’s something real at stake in Ira and Ruth’s relationship — namely, her desire to have a large family and his inability to oblige (owing to the complications of a war injury). The other reason is that Huston (grandson of John) and Chaplin (even burdened with her silly accent) have terrific chemistry together, every one of their smoldering glances worth a few hundred pages of Sparks’ purple prose. Meanwhile, back in the present, Luke and Sophia steam up several different shades of stained glass in a shower scene that evokes the late softcore maestro Zalman King, and try to figure out if there is enough room in their relationship for Rango the bull and New York (which, whenever anyone mentions it, sounds as distant and forbidding as Siberia). Trust that Sparks — a master of the outlandish, deus-ex-machina finale — will find a way.

If “The Longest Ride” is partly Sparks’ tone-deaf valentine to God’s chosen people, it’s also a jeremiad of sorts against the big-city elites (including, no doubt, this very critic) whom he feels wield too much cultural influence in our country. Like Sophia, Ruth is an art aficionado, who compensates for her childless womb by amassing an enviable collection of contemporary masters (Matisse, Motherwell, Passlof, Rothko), much of it acquired from nearby Black Mountain College (a reminder that North Carolina has cutting-edge culture, too). But Sparks and the filmmakers can’t help taking a few cheap potshots at “squiggly lines on a canvas” and devising an art-auction climax that effectively says the sentimental value of a single unremarkable, representational canvas is worth more than all of the world’s abstract marvels combined. That scene may qualify as Sparks baring his writerly soul to the crowd. But most of the movie’s target demo is sure to be too busy swooning over Eastwood’s bared abs to even notice.

Production designer Mark E. Garner and costume designer Mary Claire Hannan’s period re-creations have that overly shiny-and-new look of a model home or furniture showroom, as if everything in the frame were untouched by human hands — a problem exacerbated by the plastic, washed-out textures of David Tattersall’s digital cinematography.

Reviewed at Regal E-Walk, New York, April 2, 2015. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 128 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Fox release of a Fox 2000 Pictures presentation of a Temple Hill/Nicholas Sparks production. Produced by Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Sparks, Theresa Park. Executive producers, Michael Inperato Stabile, Robert Teitel, Tracey Nyberg. Co-producer, H.H. Cooper.
• Crew: Directed by George Tillman Jr. Screenplay, Craig Bolotin, based upon the novel by Nicholas Sparks. Camera (Technicolor, Arri Alexa HD, widescreen), David Tattersall; editor, Jason Ballantine; music, Mark Isham; music supervisor, Season Kent; production designer, Mark E. Garner; art director, Geoffrey S. Grimsman; set decorator, Chuck Potter; set designer, Chris Biddle; costume designer, Mary Claire Hannan; sound, Carl S. Rudisill; sound designer, Derek Vanderhorst; supervising sound editor, Donald Sylvester; re-recording mixers, Andy Nelson, Jim Bolt; visual effects supervisor, Jack Braver; visual effects, Method Studios, Phosphene; CosFX Films, Technicolor; bull riding stunt coordinator, Troy Brown; stunt coordinators, G. Peter King, JJ Danshaw, Ben P. Jensen; associate producers, James Paul, Mitchell Smith; assistant director, H.H. Cooper; casting, Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham.
• With: Britt Robertson, Scott Eastwood, Jack Huston, Oona Chaplin, Alan Alda, Lolita Davidovich, Melissa Benoist, Gloria Reuben, Arthur Kennedy, Rango the Bull.

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The Longest Ride Reviews

After an hour, I was like, "no, I'm over it."

Full Review | May 27, 2020

[T]he movie is painfully cliched, poorly written, and so ethically skewed that I take strong umbrage to its message.

Full Review | Apr 9, 2020

It needed more tragedy... it's a Nicholas Sparks movie after all!

Full Review | Mar 27, 2020

One of the best [Nicholas] Sparks' adaptations ever.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2019

Another cookie-cutter Nicholas Sparks adaptation emerges undercooked, seemingly without undergoing redrafts or second takes.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | May 8, 2019

It's a tried-and-true formula that works, and given the right romantic pairing, works wonders. And admit it, you love it.

Full Review | Apr 17, 2019

So much of these kind of movies depends on the connection between the lead couple and these two had it.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Mar 7, 2019

And like their predecessors, they and their co-stars Oona (granddaughter of Charlie) Chaplin and Jack (nephew of Anjelica) Huston succeed in making The Longest Ride enjoyable enough.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2019

This is your standard romantic drama, with a checklist of the genre's cliches peppering the film's way too long 139-minute running time.

Full Review | Jan 23, 2019

A Good Ol' Fashioned Roll In The Hay

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 8, 2018

The Longest Ride did not convert me to being a fan of romance films, but it did show me that I can enjoy parts of one.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 30, 2018

Even by Sparks's standards, this is clichd old stuff, not helped by the fact that the young actors in the contemporary story -- Britt Robertson and Scott Eastwood (yes, Clint's son) -- are no match for Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin.

Full Review | Oct 30, 2017

I'll say this for The Longest Ride: It did not make me want to burn anything down.

Full Review | Oct 14, 2017

Scott Eastwood's less mysterious than dad. Clint's got more warrior, Scott's got more lover. Nevertheless! Scott's very Clinty! 'Ride's' the anti-'Fifty Shades of Grey.'

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 11, 2016

[It] so casually meanders down a cluttered road of clichs that you feel chided for daring to take a single ounce of it seriously.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 23, 2016

This could have been the second-best Nicholas Sparks movie had it just been Ira and Ruth's story. Instead, The Longest Ride is weighed down by an unnecessary second story that tries too hard, and bullpen full of clichs.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 29, 2015

Its theme of cherishing love when it comes your way couldn't be blunter, but on the whole this is one of the better Sparks movies, with even a neat twist in the tale to reward those who last the distance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 21, 2015

Unfortunately, Chaplin's brilliance, Alda's funny crustiness, and Eastwood's vulnerability aren't enough to keep this film afloat.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 17, 2015

The Longest Ride is a weak sauce addition to the Sparks empire, a little better than last year's The Best of Me, but miles below uber-Sparks work The Notebook.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2015

The Longest Ride is what happens when a studio exec sees The Notebook and Dear John, and then goes "You see that? Do it again the same, but different."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2015

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‘the longest ride’: what the critics are saying.

A reckless bull rider and a young college student spark a star-crossed romance in Nicholas Sparks latest film adaptation.

By Patrick Shanley

Patrick Shanley

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The Longest Ride , the latest film adaptation of the romantic novels of Nicholas Sparks , centers on the relationship between former champion bull rider Luke ( Scott Eastwood ) looking for a comeback and young college student Sophia ( Britt Robertson ) . Their conflicting lives and ideals are put into view by the memories of an older man, Ira ( Alan Alda ), recalling his own romantic past. 

The film is the 10th adaptation of Sparks’ novels and is directed by  Barbershop franchise producer  George Tillman Jr . Also starring are Jack Huston and Game of Thrones alum Oona Chaplin . 

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The Longest Ride is expected to open somewhere in the $12 million range, while Furious 7  likely will retain the top spot at the box office this weekend. 

Read what top critics are saying about The Longest Ride :

The Hollywood Reporter ‘s Todd McCarthy says when it comes to Sparks, “you’re either up for the ride or you’re not,” and “if you’re not, well, The Longest Ride will feel like one of the longest 128 minutes of your life. Old-fashioned in all the most tedious ways, this by-the-numbers romance between oddly mismatched lovers plods along in a way that will nonetheless provide the cinematic equivalent of an agreeable airplane novel read for the already converted.”

“What’s most strange here is how Sparks, in a calculated attempt to link people from very different worlds, offers up social backgrounds for them that simply don’t mix at all — modern Southern college sorority life, the circumstances for World War II Jewish refugees, enclaves of modern art a half-century ago and today and, per the title, the good-old-boy milieu of professional bull riding.” Director Tillman “indulges, nay, embraces the sanitized banality of Sparks’ world with a straight face. Just as the basic plot points are hard to swallow, even the most rudimentary aspects of the characters’ interactions feel forced, artificial and unspontaneous.” 

Chaplin is the “sole younger actor to pop here; playing the only one of the youthful characters with any boldness or inclination to speak her own mind,” while Alda “makes the canned sentimentality of his 91-year-old character go down quite easily as he comments to Sophia about the vicissitudes of his life.” The film’s “settings and compositions are picture-postcard, the score syrupy, the bull-riding coverage not entirely convincing, the sentiments cliched and reassuring. But, boy oh boy, the ending! In Sparks’ world, when happiness rains, it pours.”

The New York Times ‘ A. O. Scott writes, “The obstacles along the way seem trivial enough to make the story of [Eastwood and Robertson’s] relationship fairly tedious, despite the charm and sincerity of the actors.” The flashbacks to “mid-20th century avant garde is as unexpected a presence in this kind of movie as the Hebrew prayer book,” but “a remarkably pedigreed cast” gives the film “the dollop of specialness that is a brand requirement. The Last Song had Miley Cyrus and baby sea turtles. Nights in Rodanthe had the word Rodanthe. Dear John and The Lucky One had the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Notebook had Gena Rowlands and the wettest kiss ever. A Walk to Remember had … honestly I forget. Someone put together a listicle! That’s the kind of criticism this brand was made for.”

Los Angeles Times ‘ Betsy Sharkey  notes that despite “shots of the eye candy that is Eastwood, Sparks’ latest romance to make its tissue-sodden way to the big screen is a wash. A long one.” The film’s “two-plus hours is mostly marked by an emptiness born of scene after scene designed to blatantly manipulate emotions rather than trigger them.” Adapting the novel, screenwriter Craig Bolotin “makes only minor adjustments. Adding intellect, insight or real romance are not among the changes.” Alda is “given little to do except spend time in a hospital bed and provide a reason for flashbacks to Ira’s younger days,” while “Chaplin and Huston do a slightly better job of steaming up the screen than Eastwood and Robertson.” The story is “filled with many moments when it seems all might fall apart. But true to the Sparks’ literary formula … it all works out in the end — which would only qualify as a spoiler if it didn’t.”

Chicago Tribune ‘s Michael Phillips says the film “can be described the way Eastwood … is described in the opening seconds of the movie: ‘easy on the eyes and a magician on a bull.’ The movie is easy on the eyes. And Sparks is a magician with the bull.” Tillman “appears to have gone into this assignment having studied the complete works of Lasse Hallstrom , who directed Dear John  and Safe Haven , two previous Sparks adaptations, for their honey-glow sunsets and utter fraudulence. But that’s not even a criticism with this material; it’s simply a fact.” Though he does have a “light but effective touch with his actors.” The film “glides along and delivers its reheated comfort food by the ton.”

Claudia Puig of USA Today calls the film a “sentimental slog” that has the “distinction of being the longest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. Otherwise, it’s distinction-free.” The “main reason to see this cliched movie is handsome star Scott Eastwood,” whose “toned pecs and abs are given nearly as much focus, since there’s a target audience: women who like to swoon at the movies.” The film “covers a predictable checklist of Sparks-isms. Gorgeous heartthrob falls for smart, cute girl. Older, often sick or feeble, characters impart sage advice. Beautiful landscapes loom large. Gauzy curtains sway as the lovebirds get tastefully amorous.” Overall, it “is sentimental, forced and silly, but it’s sure to hit the bull’s-eye with its intended audience.”

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The Longest Ride (2015)

• User Reviews
• I really thought The Longest Ride was going to be a sappy movie based on a book by Nicholas Sparks. I was mistaken. Yes, it can be sappy but turns out to be a good story. A young couple, a city girl and a cowboy go out on a date only to discover they are too different for it to work. They drive up to an accident scene and the cowboy saves the driver while the gal discovers a lot of letters. This sets a path to a past love story and sets the course for the cowboy and city girl to have a little faith in finding love even though circumstances may point elsewhere. I believe this is a good date movie or just a feel good story. Long live cowboys.

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The Longest Ride Review

19 Jun 2015

128 minutes

Longest Ride, The

Roll your eyes all you like, but you //will// cry. This is a Nicholas Sparks adaptation and, true to form, it keeps a heavy hand on the heartstrings. From their cowboy-hat meet-cute, bull-rider Luke (Eastwood, dripping with his dad’s Rawhide cool) and uni student Sophia (Tomorrowland’s Robertson) seem doomed, until they save an old man’s life and see their relationship mirrored in his own love affair — told in flashback by Chaplin and Jack Huston. The warm settings are littered with clichés, yet however contrived this tenth Sparks-to-screen becomes, the emotions and chemistry outweigh the bull.

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The Longest Ride

• Drama , Romance , Sports , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 10, 2015
• Britt Robertson as Sophia Danko; Scott Eastwood as Luke Collins; Alan Alda as Ira Levinson; Jack Huston as Young Ira; Oona Chaplin as Young Ruth

Home Release Date

• July 14, 2015
• George Tillman Jr.

Distributor

• 20th Century Fox

Movie Review

Bulls do not make good dates.

I’m not trying to be insulting. It’s a simple fact. They snort. They ooze gunk from their noses. They have very little to offer in the way of conversation. Spend quality time with an angry bull and you’ll likely consider steak to be not just a tasty dinner, but a proper punishment.

Bulls are one-ton slabs of untamed nasty—as unlikeable as domesticated critters come. But Luke Collins loves ’em anyway.

No, check that: He loves riding ’em. He doesn’t just hang with these hideous hocks of hide; he climbs on their backs and holds on like grim death for eight-second stretches, hoping like crazy he doesn’t get hurled into the next state. No matter that one such bull—a spinning leviathan named Rango—knocked him clean into a coma. No matter that another such encounter could kill him. Luke just can’t stay away. He’s a through-and-through cowboy who takes life in eight-second spurts, even if each of those seconds carries with it the ultimate risk. Bull riding, it seems, is the only thing the guy loves.

Well, at least until Luke meets Sophia, a pretty and smart art major going to Wake Forest University. The two run into each other at a bull riding event, of course. She picks up his hat. He says keep it. And suddenly it looks like the handsome dude in the jeans and boots found someone besides Rango who can throw him for a loop.

But sometimes love is more like Luke’s favorite sport than we’d all like it to be—full of ups and downs and unexpected twists and jarring thumps. So when Sophia tells Luke she’s moving to New York City in a couple of months, it seems their ride together might be over before it begins.

As he drives her home from a romantic date, Luke spies something along the side of the road. An elderly man crashed his car through a guardrail, and it looks like the whole works is fixing to explode.

Luke hastily pulls the guy from the car, but the injured oldster seems more anxious about a box on the passenger seat than he is about his own condition. Sophia retrieves it—and finds that it’s stuffed with pictures of and letters to a woman named Ruth. As Sophia sits in the hospital, waiting to see if the old man will be OK, she sneaks a peak. And then, as the days pass and the man slowly recovers, she reads them to him—each word and phrase giving shape to a romance undiminished even after 70 years.

There’s pain in those letters, too. Lots and lots of pain. Seems you don’t need to get launched by a bull to get hurt.

Positive Elements

The old man is Ira Levinson, a widower who still pines for the wife of his youth. In The Longest Ride’s flashback parallel narrative, we see the two of them when they first fell in love. Their relationship wasn’t always easy. Ruth, for instance, desperately wants a (large) family, so when an infection robs Ira’s ability to give her children, she tries hard to sacrifice that dream for a life with him. And when it seems their two-person family is no longer enough for Ruth, Ira sadly opens the door—showing a willingness to sacrifice his own happiness for hers.

“I love you so much I just want you to be happy,” he tells her, “even if that happiness no longer includes me.” Happily, after a short time apart, Ruth returns, and the two build a wonderful life together, even in the midst of disappointment.

“Love requires sacrifice,” Ira tells Sophia. “Always.”

It’s a lesson Sophia and Luke both, eventually, take to heart. Sophia sacrifices many of her own ambitions for her beau, and Luke, stubborn as he is, comes to realize that as thrilling as bull riding can be, it can’t hold a candle to having Sophia around.

Ruth tutors a young, neglected boy, and she and Ira would have adopted the kid if his current guardians would’ve let them. When the Levinsons say goodbye to the boy for the last time, Ruth tells him he can be anything he wants to be—to never sell himself short. (Decades later, Ira learns that the boy grew up to be a college professor, and that he believed he owed everything he became to Ruth.)

Spiritual Elements

Ira and Ruth are Jewish, and we see them in the local synagogue. We hear a professor encourage his art students to incorporate their mistakes purposefully, and to not leave things “to fate or the Lord or chance, whatever you want to call it.”

Sexual Content

Luke is an old-fashioned kind of guy, prone to proffering flowers and favoring actual dates over “hanging” and “hooking up” (even insisting on paying). But when Sophia takes a shower at his pad, that kind of upright sensitivity doesn’t stop him from joining her in the water. We see her tempt him, stripping while only halfway behind a door. Then the two spend a minute or two of screen time kissing and caressing and (it’s implied by way of expressions and positions) having sex. As they clutch and grope and entwine, the camera zooms in from different angles, showing lots of skin and focusing on all but the critical bits of their anatomies.) Two or three other steamy sex scenes are shown in rapid-fire order as they spend every second of their free time in bed, lounging around either naked or partly naked (always covered just enough for the film’s PG-13 rating to remain intact). We see part of Luke’s backside before he pulls his pants back on. We see them both undress and jump in a lake in their underwear.

Ira and Ruth take things slower back in the 1940s, but they, too, end up kissing passionately and then having sex in Ira’s father’s tailor shop, pushing aside fabric and thread to make room on the table. (We see Ruth wrap her legs around Ira.) They frolic in the ocean, with her top revealing cleavage and midriff.

Sophia’s sorority sisters wear revealing getups to the rodeo and in their house. One of them yanks down Sophia’s neckline in front of Luke to reveal more of her cleavage. Luke jokes with Sophia that her life in a sorority house must be all pillow fights in underwear. “We don’t wear underwear,” Sophia jokes back. The Wake Forest women ogle the cowboy as he walks by. One or two modern paintings contain suggestions of artistic nudity.

Violent Content

Bull riding is, indeed, a very dangerous sport. The tumbles can be spectacular, and riders can get seriously hurt or even die—elements the movie shows and stresses. Luke’s run-in with Rango is a violent affair, with the man getting spun into the air and then harried by the beast. When it’s over, Luke lies on the arena dirt, unconscious, blood streaming from his forehead. Another time, Luke’s thrown hard against an arena gate.

Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the threat and presence of death is very real to Ruth and Ira as well. A lingering, mournful scene shows that someone has died while sleeping. And among other tragedies, Ira is injured by a bullet while rescuing someone on a battlefield. (Blood stains their clothes.)

Crude or Profane Language

Four or five s-words. Also, one or two each of “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused once; God’s is misused a half-dozen times (once with the aforementioned “d–n”).

Drug and Alcohol Content

One of Sophia’s sorority sisters gets plastered at a bar, saying that the odds of her throwing up are somewhere around 90%. Sophia, Luke and others drink wine and beer at parties and in bars. Luke pops pills for the pain. We see a Jack Daniel’s advertisement on a chute gate.

Other Negative Elements

Bull riders gamble. Ira talks about how hospital food tastes like “warm spittle.”

Movies based on Nicholas Sparks books are like Thomas Kinkade paintings—pretty, sentimental and all so very similar. Just as Kinkade’s work always seems to be filled with flowering trees and thatch-covered roofs in sunset-dappled landscapes, so Sparks’ stories are filled with beautiful people perilously in love with someone in threat of imminent death. “Nicholas Sparks?” someone quipped when I told them what movie I was reviewing. “Well, you know someone’s gonna die.”

Amid that, The Longest Ride still serves as a love letter to love itself. And it’s not just infatuation or youthful passion that’s paramount here (although we get an eyeful of that). Ira, Ruth, Luke and Sophia show us the way to enduring, sacrificial love as well. Sparks’ movies speak to those who believe that love can and should last a lifetime, even if it’s not always easy. His vision for that, interestingly, isn’t so far removed from the Apostle Paul’s immortal musings on love—eternally trusting, hopeful, persevering.

It’s just that the way such flowering love is shown onscreen often runs counter to what the Bible teaches. While Luke bills himself as an old-fashioned cowboy, he still takes roll after roll in the hay with his pretty pardner. Even Ira and Ruth share intimate moments before marriage—in an age when such behavior was still scandalous.

In the 21st century, it’d be far more shocking—at least as far as Hollywood’s concerned—for two loopy lovebirds to not sleep together. Now, that’d be quite the twist for a secular romance in the 2010s, wouldn’t it? It’d be the Jackson Pollock of love affairs—a daring departure that might change the way we look at art and our world.

But Nicolas Sparks is not Jackson Pollock.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Longest Ride review: stop the wooing, I want to get off

The 10th Nicholas Sparks film adaptation mashes up a college girl meets bull-rider romance with the long drawn-out life story of a childless war veteran – to gruesome effect

F rom an economics point of view, it makes sense. Why sit through only one boring melodrama when you can watch two for the same price? The Longest Ride, the 10th feature-length adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks beach read (The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe) makes the unusual and, in this case, unfortunate decision to smash two wildly different tales together in the hope that some sort of universal lesson can be drawn from the juxtaposition. On one side we’ve got a modern (well, a Sparks version of modern) romance about a college girl falling in love with a professional bull rider. Through shoehorned flashback, we learn about a local, kindhearted second world war vet and his marriage to an intellectual Austrian refugee. Unlike the old US television commercials shilling Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups , these are not two great tastes that taste great together. It’s more like trying to force a mashup between Kenny Chesney and Arnold Schoenberg.

“There’s a difference between rodeo and bull riding!” explains Sophia’s sorority sisters as they slip on their shit-kickers and grab a Bud Light. While one might ask what entertainment could possibly be found in observing the torment of large, dangerous animals, The Longest Ride makes it clear in its numerous, well-lit closeups of belt buckles. “Not just guys. The hottest guys!” Sophia’s originally from New Jersey, though Britt Robertson is just as blond and tank-topped as her giddy roommates at Winston-Salem’s Wake Forest University . So when nationally ranked rider Luke Collins’ hat flies into her hands, it’s no surprise he tells her to keep it. (I forget what she says back, I was absolutely lost in Scott “fils de Clint” Eastwood ’s dreamy, pale blue eyes.)

Luke, an old-fashioned gentleman who calls rather than texts, eventually takes Sophia on a date – a barbecue picnic by a lake that the North Carolina tourism board ought to take kindly to. But, despite their attraction, they know the romance is going nowhere. She’s about to graduate and head up to New York to work in an art gallery. She might as well say she’s going to spend the summer burning American flags.

After the date, they find a crashed vehicle. In it is Ira ( Alan Alda ), not looking too well. At the hospital, Sophia decides to violate federal laws and read Ira’s mail. The story of his life is slowly, slowly teased out through this preposterous epistolary conceit. Basically, he was wounded in the war and couldn’t have children, but he and his wife ( Oona Chaplin ), who always wanted children, found happiness through compromise. (Much of this happiness stemmed from taking drives to North Carolina’s famed Black Mountain College and buying paintings – which isn’t exactly a good moral statement about the ephemeral nature of material goods, but maybe there’s some honesty to this.)

The story from mid-century (with Jack Huston as the young Ira) is set in Greensboro, North Carolina, but is a Disneyland fantasy. There’s hardly an acknowledgement of our couple’s Jewish heritage in a largely non-Jewish community, which might have been interesting. But, sorry, it’s back to the buckin’ chute.

Luke, you see, was on a career path to be the best (always, the best) but an evil bull named Rango (He gets closeups! Look at his eyes! Pure evil!) nearly killed him a year ago. He spent days in a coma and everyone sane in Luke’s life (his mom, mostly) is begging him to hang up the spurs. Naturally, he won’t. He’s got to be the best. And that means one final ride (the longest ride?) against Rango, even if the doctors warn he may never walk again.

Far be it from me to spoil a movie in a review, but The Longest Ride is such junk that I don’t care. Much to my chagrin, Luke, in the lead as 2015’s top cinematic narcissistic asshole, doesn’t, in fact, sever his spine. His idiotic machismo gets him the trophy and, even worse, the girl. This is after she dumps him for refusing to give up his idiotic career. Why, you ask? Well, listen, I could only imagine what kind of moves a fella like Luke has when the lights are low. You should see the way those bulls knock ya around.

Fans (or perhaps victims is a better term) of Nicholas Sparks films know that they’re never complete without a wholly unpredictable twist at the end. I’m still reeling from Safe Haven , in which it is revealed that one of the major characters was actually a ghost. The Longest Ride has one, too, and it elicited chuckles from the crowd, but it’s of a fairly benign Scooby Doo quality. This is the film’s grossest crime. It’s dumb, it’s long, it’s dull, but it isn’t quite bad enough to be camp.

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The worlds of professional bull riding, modern art, World War II, and tough love become entangled in a sappy mess in The Longest Ride , the next Nicholas Sparks romantic drama novel to get the big screen treatment.

With nine previous adaptations under his belt, the proliferative author certainly doesn’t have a problem attracting the attention of Hollywood producers willing to throw bags of money to option his work. And why wouldn’t they? Those movies – led by Message in a Bottle and The Notebook – have gone on to gross nearly $1 billion worldwide.

But despite all the monetary success and generous adoration from millions of fans, Sparks still hasn’t managed to crack the code of pleasing those fickle film critics. Not that it matters, however, as his adaptations have always proven to be critic-proof anyway. And despite what you read here – or anywhere else, for that matter – The Longest Ride , will go on to gross millions in spite of its glacial pacing, clunky structure, and lack of energy. And yes, I realize I’m looking for the wrong things in a film like this, but an egregious lack of romantic spark between a film’s two leads should spell doom. But with The Longest Ride , it most certainly won’t.

The Longest Ride tells two love stories simultaneously. The main, set in modern-day North Carolina stars Scott Eastwood (yes, the son of that Eastwood) as Luke, a rider on the Professional Bull Riding circuit, and Britt Robertson as Sophia, a bright young girl studying art at Wake Forest University. The two meet – in one of the most eye-rollingly forced methods – and fall in love despite the obvious complications that arise from their city-girl meets country-boy differences.

As the couple returns home from a date one evening, they happen upon a burning car on the side of the road and rescue a semi-conscious man named Ira (Alan Alda) and his prized box of letters that he carries around for some unexplained reason. Turns out the letters introduce us to the second love story thread about Ira shipping off to World War II and leaving his stateside sweetheart, Ruth (Oona Chaplin – yes, that Chaplin) behind. As Sophia reads the letters she learns that Ira returned from the war with injuries that rendered him incapable of fathering children. But Ruth loved her husband anyway and chose to stay with him in spite of her desire for many children.

Naturally, Sophia sees herself in a similar dilemma to Ruth as she nears graduation and will soon face the decision of either staying with the man she loves or taking a prestigious art museum internship in Manhattan. Of course the idea being conveyed is one of sacrifice and the tough decisions we’re forced to make for one another. But the film’s main problem is with the relationship between Luke and Sophia as directed by George Tillman, Jr. Both actors do an admirable job of reading their lines, from an adapted script by Craig Bolotin, and even show occasional twinges of a bright future, but we never buy into their relationship. The chemistry just isn’t there. Plus, their dilemma and modern-day storyline is far less interesting than that of Ira and Ruth. Chaplin – the granddaughter of Charlie – shows a great vibrancy and is just fun to watch on the screen. Her energy and pizzazz bring a much-needed spark to a story that bogs down way too often in its 2-hour-plus runtime.

Adding to Luke and Sophia’s dilemma is Luke’s stubborn insistence on continuing his bull riding career despite warnings from the doctor that another injury could render him unable to walk. But, naturally, Luke doesn’t get it because he’s a bull rider and “that’s what bull riders do.” So, their dilemma continues until one or the other is forced to finally give in or until that ridiculously contrived twist ending is revealed, whicver comes first.

As a love story, The Longest Ride is a rather dull and lifeless one only made bearable by the flashbacks – despite their awkward handling. Most will see past the film’s glaring shortcomings however, as their attention will be taken by the pretty faces and tight bodies of its two main leads who take a PG-13 rating to the limits. Speaking of limits: what’s more difficult than staying on a 2000-pound bull for a full 8 seconds? Staying awake during The Longest Ride for 139 minutes.

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MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action. Runtime: 139 mins Director : George Tillman Jr. Writer: Craig Bolotin Cast: Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda Genre : Romance | Drama Tagline: The Longest Ride Memorable Movie Quote: "It's pretty simple. Just hang on for 8 seconds." Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Official Site: http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-longest-ride Release Date: April 10, 2015 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: No details available. Synopsis : Based on the bestselling novel by master storyteller Nicholas Sparks, The Longest Ride centers on the star-crossed love affair between Luke, a former champion bull rider looking to make a comeback, and Sophia, a college student who is about to embark upon her dream job in New York City’s art world. As conflicting paths and ideals test their relationship, Sophia and Luke make an unexpected connection with Ira, whose memories of his own decades-long romance with his beloved wife deeply inspire the young couple. Spanning generations and two intertwining love stories, The Longest Ride explores the challenges and infinite rewards of enduring love.

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Movie Review: The Longest Ride (2015)

• Greg Eichelberger
• Movie Reviews
• 3 responses
• --> April 8, 2015

Nicholas Sparks, who has probably put more words to paper than William Shakespeare (although none as memorable) has graced us with his yearly obligatory salute to misogyny, perfect abs and beautiful white people with problems we WISH we could have in his latest tearjerker, The Longest Ride .

Sparks, the creator of such books/films as “The Notebook,” “ Dear John ,” “A Walk to Remember,” “ Safe Haven ” and “ The Lucky One ,” among others, has made millions tricking people into thinking these are truly romantic efforts when in reality, they follow the same by-the-numbers formula (guy or girl comes to new town running from a dreadful secret, meets desirable girl or guy, love and lust soon follow). Plus, there was never a more accurate description of a motion picture since “Dumb and Dumber, Too.”

Here, director George Tillman Jr. (who helmed “Men Of Honor” in 2000, but nothing much since) tries to tell two different stories in North Carolina during two different eras simultaneously (just think of “The Lake House” without the laughs, charm and bus accidents). The tale of Luke (Scott Eastwood, yep, he’s Clint’s son) and Sophie (Britt Robertson, “ Delivery Man ”) takes place in the present, while the saga of Ira (Jack Huston, “ American Hustle ”) and Ruth (Oona Chaplin, “Game of Thrones” TV series) is set during World War II. They come together one night after a car driven by old Ira (the still-alive Alan Alda, “ Wanderlust ”) skids off the road, forcing Luke to pull him to safety. A package of letters are found in the car and Sophie begins reading them to him which sets the whole flashback/second plotline into action.

Meanwhile, Luke is a bullrider (“That’s all I know how to do!,” he shouts. Really?) who is just a concussion away from permanent brain damage and art lover Sophie is one cliché character away from breaking Sparks’ record of “writing” women who appear strong and confident on the outside, yet exhibit no lives of their own outside the hunky studs they are attracted to in these movies (remember how many times the term, “stupid woman” is used in “The Notebook?”).

Of course they meet cute — he drops his hat while on a bull and tells her to “Keep it,” for whatever that’s worth. In real life, she would have said, “No thanks.” In reel life, however, it leads to a most incredible budding romance.

Yes, Luke doesn’t need much help here, possessing his father’s good looks and crooked smile, his “aw shucks” demeanor and chiseled body (I mean, we cannot forget his chiseled body as the cameras linger on it constantly like a creepy stand-in for Jeffrey Dahmer). His acting pedigree lacks some, but his old man really didn’t hit his stride until he was 60, so I’m willing to give Scott a little more time. Robertson, on the other hand, is the perfect example of when pretty meets annoying and, usually after time, the latter always wins out. She wants Luke to give up the rodeo circuit, but it’s all he knows (as was alluded to earlier in this review). It’s a story that pales in comparison to the secondary plot of Ira and Ruth and fleeing their European homeland and war and a world in turmoil, the inability to have children and other problems, but, strangely enough, no mention of the Antisemitism that drove them to the United States in the first place. In the meantime, Academy Award-nominated Alda is left to play a second-rate Walter Matthau in “I.Q.,” trying to show the dull Scott and Sophie what love is REALLY all about.

If your are a fan of Sparks, a lonely single woman or possibly a 14-year-old girl, you may find The Longest Ride appealing, others, though, will most likely see it as contrived and manipulative, like most of Sparks’ work. My question is, why not just make a film about Ira and Ruth and leave the other couple completely out of the picture?

I found myself thinking this more than once during this exercise.

Tagged: cowboys , love , novel adaptation , WWII

I have been a movie fan for most of my life and a film critic since 1986 (my first published review was for "Platoon"). Since that time I have written for several news and entertainment publications in California, Utah and Idaho. Big fan of the Academy Awards - but wish it would go back to the five-minute dinner it was in May, 1929. A former member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and current co-host of "The Movie Guys," each Sunday afternoon on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego with Kevin Finnerty.

Movie Review: Despicable Me 3 (2017) Movie Review: Transformers: The Last Knight (2017) Movie Review: All Eyez On Me (2017) Movie Review: The Mummy (2017) Movie Review: Baywatch (2017) Movie Review: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) Movie Review: The Promise (2016)

'Movie Review: The Longest Ride (2015)' have 3 comments

April 8, 2015 @ 7:57 pm on21

A shudder just went down my spine and out my ass.

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April 8, 2015 @ 8:33 pm Loco Lopez

Honestly, I think I’d rather watch another Twilight installment than watch another contrived paint by numbers Nicholas Sparks pretty white person romance.

April 8, 2015 @ 8:45 pm drank the koolaid

So its the perfect date movie, right?

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No less than the “Harry Potter” adaptations or the “Fast and Furious” movies, the novels of Nicholas Sparks form the basis of a consistent film franchise in which the characters’ names and crises and letters-read-aloud voice-overs may change, but it’s the same wish-fulfillment universe across title after title. The public likes what the public likes, even if the public likes some Sparks adaptations more than others.

“The Longest Ride,” the 10th Sparks title to hit the screen with a soft, pretty thud, can be described the way Scott Eastwood (male lead, son of Clint, looks plausible in a cowboy hat) is described in the opening seconds of the movie: “easy on the eyes and a magician on a bull.” The movie is easy on the eyes. And Sparks is a magician with the bull.

From the size of the American flag hanging inside the hero’s farmhouse in “The Longest Ride,” we certainly know which country we’re in, and since it’s Sparks, we acknowledge we’re back in the magical emerald-green kingdom of coastal North Carolina. Eastwood plays a rising young rodeo star, Luke, who gets bucked off a particularly mean bull in the opening minutes. That’s just fate playing matchmaker; there, at the rodeo with her college sorority sisters on the hunt for hot guys, is art history major Sophia, portrayed by Britt Robertson.

It’s love, folks. It’s love, even though Luke doesn’t understand Sophia’s admiration of “squiggly lines on canvas” and pretentious artistic abstraction. This guy’s “old-school” and says so. (“Call me old-school,” he says.) But he’s willing to cross the divide, just as this New Jersey transplant on scholarship wants to fit into Luke’s risky life of bulls and traumatic bull-related head injuries. The courtly, well-mannered hunkdom is a decent trade-off.

Their first date, a lakeside picnic, ends dramatically when they come to the aid of a car accident victim who turns out to be Alan Alda in the role of Ira Levinson, playing a Jewish variation on the life-changing “magical Negro” stereotypes in so many other movies. As he’s pulled from the flames of his wreck, a dazed Ira mutters something about “the box,” which in a Sparks movie can mean one thing only: a stash of precious correspondence the heroine will soon be reading aloud, when the elder character isn’t doing the reading in voice-over narration. Just once in a Sparks movie I wish someone would open a box and find absolutely nothing of value — hardware store receipts, a parking citation, maybe some pencils.

As in “The Notebook,” we have two love stories singing to each other in “The Longest Ride” across the decades. Ira’s life with Ruth, an Austrian World War II refugee played affectingly by Oona Chaplin, begins in 1940 and comes with its full complement of heartbreak. Ruth was an art collector of exquisite taste, which links handily to the present-day story of Sophia and Luke and Sophia’s artistic pursuits.

The director of “The Longest Ride” is George Tillman Jr. (“Soul Food,” “Notorious”), who seems like an odd choice for a Sparks romance. He appears to have gone into this assignment having studied the complete works of Lasse Hallstrom, who directed “Dear John” and “Safe Haven,” two previous Sparks adaptations, for their honey-glow sunsets and utter fraudulence. But that’s not even a criticism with this material; it’s simply a fact.

Tillman has a light but effective touch with his actors. Alda grins and yanks at our heartstrings like the wily pro he is. And it’s nice to see Lolita Davidovich again, playing Luke’s careworn yet ravishing widowed mother, perpetually sitting on the farmhouse porch, waiting for the next scene to begin. Even when Eastwood and Robertson, pleasant enough company, threaten to float off the screen, “The Longest Ride” glides along and delivers its reheated comfort food by the ton.

“The Longest Ride” – 2 stars

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action)

Running time: 2:08

Opens: Thursday evening

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'The Longest Ride' Movie Review

Get all the details of the new Nicholas Sparks film.

— -- It didn’t have to be this way.

Based on Nicholas Sparks ’ 2,826th novel -- OK, his 17th -- The Longest Ride uses one love story as an entry point into another love story. Only one of these love stories isn’t like the other, and that’s because only one of them is good.

Britt Robertson plays Sophia, a senior at Wake Forest University. Despite her New Jersey upbringing and pending art degree, she falls for Luke, played by Clint Eastwood’s son, Scott Eastwood, an up-and-coming bull rider who hopes to become the best in the world. Luke has his demons, though. Sort of. A year before meeting Sophia, he was thrown from a bull and hurt badly enough to keep him out of the saddle for a year. But that’s not really the conflict here. The conflict is, Sophia and Luke meet toward the end of her final semester, after which she’s off to New York for an internship at the art gallery of her dreams.

Enter Alan Alda ’s Ira. Returning from their first date, Luke and Sophia rescue him from his burning car on the side of the road. In true Nicholas Sparks fashion, Sophia appears to risk her life to also rescue a box a semi-conscious Ira pleads with her to save. That box contains letters Ira wrote to his late wife, Ruth. When Ira comes to, Sophia demands he tell her the story behind those letters.

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Alan Alda is, well, Alan Alda -- he’s an excellent and soulful actor who opines about his courtship and marriage. We flash back to 1941, when a young Ira (Jack Huston) meets young Ruth (Oona Chaplin), a nice Jewish girl from Vienna. In true Nicholas Sparks fashion, Ira goes off to fight in World War 2 and while he obviously doesn’t die, Sparks throws in a somewhat tragic twist. I won’t spoil it, but it will test Ira’s relationship with Ruth.

Sparks and company try to juxtapose the trials and tribulations of the two relationships, but it doesn’t really work. The biggest emotional reaction Luke and Sophia’s relationship will likely elicit from the audience is whenever Eastwood takes his shirt off. Director George Tillman Jr. does his best work in the flashback scenes involving Ruth and Ira, all of which display some sort of underlying cinematic poetry, even when it’s a cliché. And while there’s some creative storytelling during the bullfighting scenes, Luke and Sophia’s tale is predictably predictable.

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This could have been the second-best Nicholas Sparks movie (nothing comes close to The Notebook) had it just been Ira and Ruth’s story. Instead, The Longest Ride is weighed down by an unnecessary second story that tries too hard, and bullpen full of clichés.

Two-and-a-half out of five stars.

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The Longest Ride

If you loved the notebook, the best of me or the choice then you will love the longest ride, another nicholas sparks adaptation. intertwining two love stories, a young couple are inspired by the life and love of an older man as he reflects on his past. .

The Longest ride is basically a chick flick extraordinaire. There is almost nothing about that hasn't been designed to make you swoon, go awwwwww or cry. That is because it is based on a Nicholas Sparks book so think The Notebook , Dear John or The Best Of Me and you get the idea.

Sophia (Britt Robertson) is in college in South Carolina when her friend drags her to a bull-riding contest where Luke Collins ( Scott Eastwood ) is getting back in the saddle after a very serious accident the year before. The two hit it off and after a bit of too and fro, go on a date. On the way back from the date they come across a car accident and rescue the driver, Ira Levinson. Ira (Alan Alda) is brought to the hospital and as he has no family, Sophia decides to start visiting him. There she starts to read him letters he wrote to his wife (she rescued them from the car) and the two soon bond over their love of art.

The movie skips between two time-zones – the present day with Sophia and Luke, and the past with Ira and his wife Ruth (Oona Chaplin, Treason ). So essentially we have two love stories in play, both of which are very sweet. But of course, this is a Sparks adaptation so the path to true love does not run smoothly. Sophia and Luke realise that despite their feelings for each other, her dream is to work in a New York city art gallery and he wants to stay on the bull riding tour. He simply doesn't fit in with her world. So will these love birds get their happily ever after? You'll have to watch The Longest Ride to find out.

Suffice to say that this is a movie designed to hit all the right notes. The lead characters are likable and unsurprisingly beautiful. The setting is jaw-droppingly gorgeous and the love stories are kept moving along at a steady pace. While it may not win any awards, what it does, it does well. It's heartwarming and sweet without being overly saccharine and is a solid romantic drama.

• Two Great Love Stories In One
• Scott Eastwood
• Clever Script
• Just A Little Bit Too Long
• No Subplots To The Love Story

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Longest Ride, The (United States, 2015)

As a romance, a drama, or even a sports movie, The Longest Ride never reaches a satisfying destination. With its confused, sometimes-contradictory themes and scattershot love story aspirations, the film never gains traction on the shifting sands of its premise and fails to achieve even the less-than-lofty pinnacle of sudsy melodrama. The thinly-drawn characters sit at the nexus of the problem but they aren't helped by liberal doses of bad dialogue, wooden acting, and pointless narrative progression. The Longest Ride is a bore and, because the filmmakers for some reason believed it necessary to stretch this out for more than two hours, a prolonged one.

Not content to present just one love story, The Longest Ride offers two of them - one set in contemporary times and the other in the 1940s (with the latter unfolding as present-day characters read a series of old letters - a device that works infinitely better in a book than on-screen). The movie gets an injection of "sports movie" adrenaline (presumably to offset the sleep-inducing impact of the other elements) by having bull rider Luke Collins (all-around hunk Scott "Son of Clint" Eastwood) pursue a comeback after a horrific injury. Along the way he falls in love with art student Sophia Danko (TV actress Britt Robertson). They "meet cute", make goo-goo eyes at one another, and have PG-13 sex. But they're from different worlds - he loves the country and ranches, she loves New York and galleries. We're headed into Green Acres territory until the guy from M.A.S.H. shows up.

Alan Alda plays Ira Levinson, who is introduced when Luke and Sophia save his life after he crashes his car. Luckily for the movie, which clocks in at about an hour when focused on the Luke/Sophia romance, Ira wrote a lot of letters during the 1940s, when he (played in the flashbacks by Jack Huston) and his eventual wife Ruth (Oona "Granddaughter of Charlie" Chaplin) "meet cute", makes goo-goo eyes at one another, and have PG-13 sex. To further pad out the length, we get a WWII battle scene (which looks like WWI trench warfare) and an aftermath that suggests true love can cure PTSD.

There's an anachronistic aspect to The Longest Ride that makes its box office viability questionable. Certainly, Nicholas Sparks' involvement guarantees a certain level of success but with the target demographic of young women increasingly drawn to more racy material like 50 Shades of Grey , can a "soft" PG-13 romance survive? This isn't even a good PG-13 romance; it's long, confused, and doesn't tug effectively on the heartstrings. It evokes the theme of sacrificing for love only to betray that theme at the end. To say this long ride is bumpy would be to understate how uncomfortably tedious the trip is.

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