The Choice

I had the misfortune to have this as the in flight 'entertainment' on my last vacation, and although I admit that I started to watch in an optimistic fashion it soon became very much like the fascinating spectacle of watching a snake swallow a rodent. You really don't want to watch but you just can't help it. Romantic cliché after cliché followed like beads on a rosary... OK you get my drift... simile after simile.. same old same old. OK spoiler alert.. but do I really need one? They MEET CUTE... are involved with OTHER PEOPLE...but just CAN'T RESIST. There are MISUNDERSTANDINGS. Of COURSE they get together... YES she winds up in a coma... he is TORN about taking her off life support.... MIRACULOUSLY she wakes up looking BEAUTIFUL... and they live happily every after.. barf barf. I played Farm Heroes Saga through 90% of this, but as I said, morbid fascination kept me checking in to see what trite plot 'twist' would come up next. Don't waste your time on this! I'm just glad it was free on the plane.

Travis Shaw (Benjamin Walker) is a veterinarian living on the North Carolina coast. His younger sister Steph (Maggie Grace) is staying with him. He's dating Monica (Alexandra Daddario). He works with his father (Tom Wilkinson). He's a ladies' man and everybody loves him except his new neighbor Gabby Holland (Teresa Palmer). Her dog Molly got pregnant and she suspects his dog Moby. She hates his roguish charms. She's a medical student going out with fellow doctor Ryan McCarthy (Tom Welling). I'm not that impressed with Benjamin Walker. Teresa Palmer does a funny infuriated uptight girl. Despite not buying into Walker's charms, I'm willing to buy the couple's chemistry. It culminates to a funny proposal. Then the movie struggles. It's another Nicholas Sparks book but this time, the prerequisite tragedy has nothing interesting to offer. It's not a good movie to start with but the last act meanders to a nothing ending.

Terribly sappy and overtrodden, "The Choice" is a movie that begins with a bit of promise, but does nothing. It's a failure in both writing and direction - and a labor and terrible bore to watch. As the movie continues it gets more and more clichéd. Here's in excerpt off memory: "Because life just keeps happening and unfolding, if you sit still it may just pass you by." Romantic melodramas often have a hard time, and this thing doesn't even get off the ground. Its music was supremely manufactured. It was maudlin, cheap, and phony. It is an emotional fraud simple to see through reduced to sitcom level Hallmark writing. "Dear John" was fairly poor, and this was worse. 4/10 and mot recommended.