The Lucky One

Truly representative of the most important lessons of our lives.....
As a writer and philosopher, this movie in particular just blew me away. The first time I saw the previews for it, I remember thinking that it seemed to have an interesting quality to it which appealed to both my intellectual trades mentioned above. The first time I saw it, I was just blown away, as have I been in the three other times I've gone to see it.

Logan Thibault (Zac Efron) comes off as being the kind of character who you can really learn a lot from in terms of lust plain old life experiences in general. What other people brand as being 'mushy' or 'cheesy' I see as being the truth towards understanding how no matter what hand of cards you're dealt in your life, there is always hope. All you got to to is go and find it. Logan finds himself in this situation while on deployment in the Middle East, where a single, split second decision to pick up a photo amidst a pile of rubble undoubtedly comes to change the course of his entire life. After coming to the realization...

...only in the movies, but that's why we go to the movies...
I have this subversive image of Nicholas Sparks in a wifebeater at the computer, angrily pounding the keyboards and listening to death metal while a burly biker gives him a tat. Because a guy can't be that wholesome and sensitive, can he? Except that, like clockwork, Sparks' bestselling novels keep getting made into films. THE LUCKY ONE is merely the latest adaptation.

This is Hollywood, babe, so we shouldn't harp on them heaps of uncanny coincidences. Such as these: In Iraq, the morning after a harrowing exchange of gunfire with the enemy, U.S. Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault (Zac Efron) gets off his duff and picks up a photo he glimpses lying in the rubble. Suddenly, there's an explosion right where he had been sitting, and that's when the notion probably first struck him that the photo is some sort of lucky charm. Eight months later, Logan's third tour of duty ends and he's going home, that photo still tucked away in his keeping. Logan regards the mysterious girl in the...

Montage Sparks and the perfect man
Being the only male in the audience on a Friday afternoon, pretty much tells you what you are getting with "The Lucky One". As the lights came up as the credits rolled, I turned around to see myself standing among fifteen to twenty women, some were teared up, some weren't. Nicholas Sparks, the writer of the novel, has made a career off of books and movies that touch people's hearts. The biggest of those was "The Notebook", but "A Walk to Remember" & "Message in a Bottle" were notable as well.

While most of Spark's novels are tailor made for women, I found "The Notebook" to be something that everything could relate to with its theme of Alzheimer's. "The Lucky One" on the other hand, had many opportunities to reach a broader audience but brush stroked over those. I enjoyed "The Lucky One", but for some reason, it didn't quite affect me like "The Notebook" did. That may be because it didn't spend enough time in certain areas.

First of all, Zac Effron (High School...

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