By Anastasia Kadiyala and Jackie Lee
Arts Reporters
Rating: Can we give negative stars?
Since the release of Nicholas Sparks’ hit The Notebook, the movies based on this author’s work have only gone down hill, so much so that we were scared for what the next one would look like. Each one gets more predictable and somehow more cheesy to the point that we were able to predict the end of the movie within the first 30 seconds of the film.
In this adaptation of the book, southern boy Travis (Benjamin Walker) tries to woo his neighbor, Gabby (Teresa Palmer), but of course she is dating Doctor Ryan (Tom Welling). And we’re sure you can guess what happens next…
Like every other Sparks movie, something tragic happens that brings the audience to tears. In this particular film, however, the only thing that could bring us to tears was the awful acting. Palmer made one facial expression for the entire duration of the film and Walker’s southern accent is an embarrassment to the state of Georgia. We are also unsure why Walker chose to grow out his sideburns out for this movie; either way, it was not a good choice.
Was there anything good about the movie? Well, the scenic shots of North Carolina were pretty (to be honest, we would have rather watched them for two hours than the actual movie).
We really like some Sparks movies, especially The Last Song and The Notebook, but all of his newer books seem to just be copies of an older story with slight name changes and a quick transfer across a state border.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Sparks movies have shown a steady decline, and The Choice gets the lowest one yet a whopping 6%. It’s still better than we expected.
This film is not worth a trip to the theater. We recommend waiting until it’s on Netflix and saving it until you’ve had the flu for so long that you’ve seen literally everything else available.
