Endless Love is endless boredom

A review of the movie Endless Love

Katy Hansen, Reporter

Rich loner girl falls for bad boy? Check. Bad boy has a criminal record but a heart of gold? Check. Girl throws away future for boy? Check. Disapproving father? Check. The plot line for Endless Love (and every other teenage love story on the entire planet) falls within the guidelines mentioned above as Jade and David experience love for the first time while also trying to fend off Jade’s father’s constant attempts to break them up. Alex Pettyfer and Gabriella Wilde are cast as the two leading hormonal teenagers, I mean love-birds, as well as Bruce Greenwood portraying the overbearing and judgemental father of Wilde’s character, Jade. If there were not already enough clichés packed into one film, it was released in theaters on Valentines Day.

One aspect of all romantic dramas that irritates me is how quickly the relationship forms and progresses. David has watched Jade their entire high school career (creepy), but Jade never noticed him (she’s a loner remember?) until after graduation when David picks up her books for her.  He was only there to exchange the cheesy “fallen books greeting” because he is the valet at her country club of course. This completely original gesture of kindness persuades Jade to take a joyride with David… in someone else’s car (do not judge, David’s got to keep up that bad boy persona). The next day they have kissed and the day after they have done a whole lot more. No wonder Jade’s father disapproved, for a loner Jade sure moves fast. I realize the movie is only two hours long and they need to be madly in love within the first thirty minutes, but even Dear John took two weeks to fall in love.

Jade is supposedly a brilliant prodigy destined to follow in her father’s footsteps and become a successful surgeon, but as usual the girl throws everything away for the boy. I mean what else is a girl to do when she must choose between a summer internship that will lead to her dream job and a boy who will probably lead to an STD. As she is telling David she does not want to go to her internship so she can be with him, I am sitting in the theater expecting him to say something cheesy like “I can’t hold you back” or “I won’t stop you from pursuing your dreams.” For once the film is actually surprising as David encourages her to stay! Since when does the bad boy actually ruin the girls future? The only message this film is sending is that women can not have successful careers and successful relationships at the same time. Did we not cover this back in the nineteenth century?

Endless Love is a remake of the 1983 film of the same name starring Brooke Shields which was adapted from the novel written by Scott Spencer. It becomes painfully obvious that the film is terrible when even the author realizes what a stinker this film was, as well as the original and refuses to take credit for it.

He released a statement explaining, “Endless Love was botched – misquoted, as it were – once in 1981, when Franco Zeffirelli tried to make a movie out of it, and it seems as if it has been even more egregiously and ridiculously misunderstood in the movie Universal Pictures is releasing.” He continued by claiming, “I had brief contact with the first filmmakers who tried to adapt my novel, and I had no contact whatsoever with the second wave.”

I am not the only one appalled by the lack of creativity, freshness and character development. This film would have probably had more success as a silent movie considering the majority of it was a montage of kissing, kissing, oh and more kissing. There was never any reasoning behind why David and Jade were in love with one another. Yes, we know he was enamored with her for their entire four years of high school, but why he was enamored with her is still a mystery. What about David made Jade want to sacrifice her future, other than the fact that David gave Jade a social life. If I, as an audience, was able to have these questions answered throughout the film maybe I would not regret wasting that ten dollars so much, and trust me, I do regret it.

Here is my advice, money is better invested in a shoe fund then on this movie and Endless Love will play on ABC Family in a Nicholas Sparks-esque marathon. If someone is working on a time machine, give me a call because I would really like to get that ten dollars back.