IMDb description: Travis and Gabby first meet as neighbors in a small coastal town and wind up in a relationship that is tested by life's most defining moments.
Roger Ebert review: sadly, Roger Ebert passed before this film was released, and therefore the review on his site is not by him.
Female protagonist: Gabby Holland (Teresa Palmer)
Male protagonist: Travis Shaw, changed from Parker in the book (Benjamin Walker)
Star supporting cast: Tom effin' Wilkinson as Travis' dad; Maggie Grace as Travis' sister; Tom "Superman" Welling as Gabby's boyfriend
Background: Despite being the sixth book published, it was the eleventh (and so far last) to be adapted to a movie. I can't find any information on why, so I've gone ahead and made the reason be that the book was not well-liked so it just languished. That doesn't explain, though, why it was even chosen for a movie adaptation when they are other Sparks books that could have been chosen! I guess we'll never know.
First off, let's discuss the movie poster which so obviously deviates from the now-standard "two people about to kiss as a light shines between them". This poster has the lovers not even facing each other! And it has a weird color palette (clearly subjective, I know). Every time I saw this as a thumbnail when scrolling through Netflix or Amazon Prime I just thought it looked ugly so I never bothered to watch it.
The film is still the story of Travis and Gabby, neighbors that fall in love despite him being a playboy and her being completely annoyed by him (but is she??). Oh, and Gabby also has a long-term doctor boyfriend which is a huge DESPITE as well. Small things though when you find your real person. Travis and Gabby soon fall into something over a weekend when her boyfriend is away. The book doesn't really have any tension on whether Gabby is going to tell her boyfriend and end up with Travis. The movie, though, goes a bit cliche and has her unsure of what to do or who to choose. It comes to a head when her boyfriend returns home early and, while out with Gabby and his parents at the local restaurant, Travis also happens to be there.
This leads to a showdown between Gabby and Travis. She tries to be like "well, we didn't define what this is." And Travis is like "Oh, so you have fun time with country boy and run back to your rich boyfriend." I don't entirely buy this direction of the argument from Travis; he acts as if he's some poor country boy (like Noah or Dawson) when he actually owns a vet practice with his dad, has a home on the shoreline, owns a boat and a motorcycle, and is well-respected in the community as a vet. The dude speaks with a country accent, but that doesn't mean he's poor. When Gabby is trying to find some footing she claims that she doesn't even know how he feels. To which Travis grabs her face and says HE LOVES HER. He says it over and over. And even though the timeline is still ridiculous, I roll with it because both of the actors really sell it.
She ends up telling her boyfriend, who is mad at her at first but then proposes. And she says yes, which she tells Travis in a note she leaves for him. Only in movies do people say yes to proposals from the wrong person just to prove a point. They of course make their way back to each other and we see only our second Sparks wedding (the other being in A Walk to Remember).
There's a nice montage of their life together, until the Sparks Tragic Occurrence that has Gabby in a coma after a car crash and Travis left with the difficult choice of having to pull the plug. He doesn't and she eventually wakes and everything is great.
Not a lot changes from the book. It's mostly small inconsequential stuff (random name changes, adding a side story for his dad) that generally helps tell a tighter story. The timeline is still very fast, but for whatever reason the actors sell it (Benjamin Walker more so than Teresa Palmer) so when Travis tells Gabby in his southern drawl (the first actor in a Sparks adaption to actually use an accent after Rachel McAdams in The Notebook) that he loves her I believe it.
I know I give the timeline of the falling in love a lot of heat, but it's an interesting thing to think about. Gabby has been with her boyfriend a long time, and if she had never met Travis she likely would have married him and been happy. Travis would have gone on being a bit of playboy. But they meet each other and it's like Oh THIS is actually my person. It must be a strange thing to experience. Relationships can be messy, and I guess as I get older I just acknowledge that more and realize that most people are honestly doing their best.
Since I disliked the book so much, I had very low expectations for the movie. Which ended up serving me well, because it wasn't terrible and I mostly enjoyed it.
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