'The Lucky One' continues trend of predictable Hollywood romance

Cliché is still what works in Hollywood when it comes to romance, and The Lucky One is proof that, in this day and age, most films refrain from creativity. Going into this movie, I knew I was in for a girl's fantasy, filled with love, anger, passion, and romance, but given that this movie was based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, I expected a full-force mush fest.

The film begins with a military ambush where we meet Logan Thibault -Zac Efron- a U.S. Marine who narrowly survives an explosion after walking to pick up a photo of a woman that he noticed in the distance. Believing that this woman is his guardian angel, Logan keeps the photo with him and vows to find her once he's back from his final tour in Iraq. This is about where things take a turn for the girly.

Upon making it back to the states, Logan grabs his dog and the two walk from Colorado to Louisiana in hopes of finding the woman from the picture, and this is where we meet Beth Clayton (Taylor Schilling), a beautiful blonde who works at a dog kennel and lives with her mother and her son. From there, things become romantic with sprinkles of comedy from time to time until Beth's ex-husband Keith Clayton (Jay R. Ferguson) comes into the picture.

The cliché love story is played up a bit too much for me here. Keith used to be the high school football star, and Beth was his sweetheart. She got pregnant, and he asked her to marry him and it was supposed to be happily ever after, but Keith preferred to be a ladies man after the marriage, so they split. Now that Logan is in the picture, Keith becomes a creeper to the max and goes out of his way to keep an eye on things, so you know there's going to be a confrontation between him and Logan. But there really wasn't.

The film focused so much on playing up the romantic bonds and how perfect Logan was that they really seemed to forget about creating that level of conflict that the protagonist and antagonist should have, and that's really disappointing. This film seriously makes Logan seem like every woman's dream; he's got a great body, he cleans, plays piano, and seems to be able to fix just about anything.  I wish things had been more dramatic between Logan and Keith.

By the end of the film, everything was practically perfect, and everyone lived happily ever after, minus Keith - which, I think I may have been the only person to feel bad for him by the end. I would say that all in all, this is good for a date night, but don't expect to have many conversations on thoughts about the film afterwards.