Directed by: George Tillman Jr.
Starring: Scott Eastwood, Britt Robertson, Alan Alda, Oona Chaplin, Jack Huston, Lolita Davidovich
The Longest Ride is about a relationship between two of the nicest, sweetest, and dullest people on the planet. They figure things out long after we have and we impatiently await for them to catch up. Dealing with this relationship is rough enough, but we also have to contend with a relationship from the 1940s which parallels the issues the modern-day couple is facing. The only purpose this ultimately serves is to add to the film's running time. The Longest Ride clocks in at just over two hours and it feels every bit of it.
The modern romance is an ungainly fit between art and bull riding. Sophia (Robertson) is a Wake Forest senior who is a month away from starting an internship with a New York art gallery. She attends a bull riding competition with her roommate and falls instantly for Luke (Eastwood), who suffered a nearly fatal injury the previous year and is only now returning to action. If you consider the risk vs. reward of professional bull riding, it is not a sensible profession. Luke's mother (Davidovich) is forever on Luke to hang up the chaps, but He Has A Dream to be the world's best bull rider. He should listen to her, but of course he is stubborn.
Luke is a romantic and his first date with Sophia is a picnic under the stars. Because They Come From Different Worlds, it appears their relationship won't last. I think it won't last because they have so little to talk about. Because The Longest Ride is an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, there will be torrential rain and a plot development resulting from the rain. While driving Sophia home, Luke sees a car that drove off the road. They rescue the driver and a small box before the car explodes. The driver is elderly Ira Levinson (Alda), who looks great for a guy who, if my calculations are correct, must be pushing 100. Ira suffers minor injuries and is hospitalized. Sophia discovers the contents of the box, which are romantic letters written by Ira to a woman named Ruth. She reads one letter and is hooked. She wants to find out more about this relationship from Ira and agrees to read the letters to him so she (and we) can hear the endless story of Ira's courtship, marriage, and troubles with Ruth.
See if you can follow this: Ruth is the woman Ira marries and lives with. He writes letters daily about things that just happened to them and mails these letters to her. Did Ruth ever ask Ira to stop wasting money on stamps when he could just as easily hand the letters to her? Or did she ever say enough with the letters already? They do live together after all. The letters' only function is to serve as a storytelling device. We, and Sophie, have to await the outcome of Ira's and Ruth's trials and tribulations one letter at a time. It is like pulling teeth. Couldn't Sophia have skipped all of the letter reading and just asked Ira what ultimately happened with Ruth? There are shades of The Notebook here, but the reasoning behind the storytelling device in that film was more effective and understandable.
Sophia and Luke reunite, have PG-13 sex, break up because They Come From Different Worlds, and will of course reconcile in a highly dramatic way with music swelling up. The Longest Ride has little substance for as long as it is. The actors try earnestly with the dreck they are given, especially Jack Huston and Oona Chaplin as the younger versions of Ira and Ruth. Huston looks nothing like Alan Alda, but then again Ryan Gosling looked nothing like James Garner in The Notebook. Does Luke master the bull that nearly killed him a year earlier? Does he become the world's number one bull rider? If you have ever seen a movie before, then you will know the answers. If you have not seen a movie before, do not start with The Longest Ride. It may sour you on future movies.
Finally, the ten best bull riders in the world are all young white males who hail from as far west as Oklahoma and as far south as North Carolina. Are there any Japanese bull riders? Or European? "The world" in this line of work seems to consist of five states and only white males aged 20-30. In a movie fraught with as many problems as The Longest Ride has, this may seem trivial, but I find it curious.
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