# 47 – The Last Song

At last I got the chance to watch (listen) to The Last Song. Another movie that is based on a novel by the best selling author Nicolas Sparks. The big difference between this and the others (A Walk to Remember and The Notebook for example – one of my favorites!) is that this screenplay was partly written by Sparks himself  (and this other guy that has done nothing else but this screenplay). So the question that arises is that should Sparks stay true to writing just novels or should he start writing movies instead…

Like a lot of the movies that are based on books, this movie had some holes in it for me – and it felt a little distant at first. Then at the end came the big shocker surprise and I was like – “Hay, I’ve seen this movie!” I mean it is a total rip-off from 2001’s Life as a House: dad and mom divorced, dad and kid don’t get along, dad builds something, kid has a romance, kid and dad start getting along, dad is sick with cancer, kid helps finish dad’s project, dad dies. You can see the similarities between the lines and I kind of got mad at Sparks at that point. I understand that he is a really good writer and his movies are usually so sad I wanna rip my heart out but this one (despite the fact that I shed a tear or two) wasn’t that sad. I mean, if you compare it to A Walk to Remember and Notebook, you can see that this movie didn’t really give an opportunity to connect with the characters as much. Thinking back, the story was all over! There was so much drama going on that it is hard to say what was the most important message the movie wanted to give.

There was the boyfriend drama, “friend” drama, fire, turtles (don’t ask), boyfriend’s family drama, “friend” drama with boyfriend, dad drama, collage drama – you get my point? It seems like they wanted to show us so much sad/bad things, that it overwhelmed the movie itself and made it bad. Sorry to say, but that’s the truth – at first, the few minutes after the movie ended, I even liked it, but then I started to think about it and I was like – there wasn’t a single moment when I smiled because it didn’t feel warm and love drama should be warm at least once! Maybe it was the acting although I’m not gonna even go there, not because Miley was bad (she was rather tolerable) but I don’t want to judge the movie on the acting level if the story didn’t appeal to me as much as I would’ve liked.

So actress and actors a side – too much things going on in a movie that should go straight to my heart. And don’t get me wrong, Notebook had a lot of things going on too but it was much more connected to the main characters or at least it seemed that way. Maybe The Last Song is good as a book but as a movie it needed few cutbacks (like the characters Blaze and Marcus – didn’t need them, they didn’t give anything extra good to the story). But who are we kidding, it’s hard to beat A Walk to Remember and Notebook – movies that make me cry everytime I watch them and I’ve seen the first one over 10 times! I’m pretty sure I won’t cry again after watching The Last Song for the second time – or come to think of it, I’d cry because I wouldn’t understand why I’m watching that movie for the second time. 0