Susan Granger’s review of “Endless Love” (Universal Pictures)
Never a great fan of Franco Zeffirelli’s sudsy 1981 star-crossed teens love story, starring Brooke Shields, I wasn’t surprised that Shana Feste’s sugary remake is even more insipid.
Although Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) and David Elliot (Alex Pettyfer) are members of the same Atlanta graduating class, it seems that she’s spent the past four years so buried in her studies that she never looked up and saw the handsomest hunk in her high school. But he’s had his eye on her – and when he’s parking cars at a posh Inn, he finally attracts her attention. Under the watchful eye of her cardiologist father, Hugh (Bruce Greenwood), she’s headed for Brown University to study medicine and is scheduled to spend the summer working on an internship with a high-profile Georgia surgeon. Although her mom, Anne (Joely Richardson), and brother, Keith (Rhys Wakefield), have gone through their mourning period, her dad is still grieving over his older son’s death from cancer – and he’s furious when lonely Jade ditches the internship and invites David to join them at the family’s magnificent lakeside summer home. The friction between the ardent working-class suitor and upper middle-class protective dad is palpable, presumably because David’s widower dad (Robert Patrick) is an auto mechanic and David has blemish in his rebellious past.
Scripted by Joshua Safran (TV’s “Gossip Girl”) and director Shana Feste (“The Greatest,” “Country Strong”), it’s shamelessly clichéd and lamely contrived, discarding the tragic, pivotal elements of pyromania, prison and political activism that were so prevalent in Scott Spenser’s 1979 best-selling novel. As a result, Hugh’s hostility and subsequent character arc seem more memorable than the titular angst suffered by the infatuated adolescents. Or perhaps it’s because Bruce Greenwood is a more accomplished actor than either Alex Pettyfer (“Magic Mike”) or Gabriella Wilde (“The Three Musketeers”). Which leads one to wonder why Feste cast two, bland 24 year-old Brits as prototypical American teens.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Endless Love” is a tepid 3, a maudlin melodrama not worth revisiting.
