One of the most common complaints directed toward movie trailers today is that the preview gives away way too much. If you’re interested in catching the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ romance The Best of Me when it comes out on October 17th, you may want to save the spoilers and skip this two-and-a-half minute ad entirely.
The drama, which stars James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan, centers around Dawson Cole and Amanda Collier, two high-school sweethearts who reunite many years later, after Dawson is released from prison. Evoking elements of The Notebook and The Lucky One, both adaptations of Sparks’ bestsellers, The Best of Me shows the problems between the love interests when they were young (and played by the Point Break remake’s Luke Bracey and Trust‘s Liana Liberato) and then what happens when they meet up again years later.
The Best of Me‘s full trailer checks off a variety of romantic drama conventions. Nervous first glances? Check. Shameless flirting? Check. Parental interference? Check. Kissing in the lake? Check. Kissing in the rain? Check. (The trailer does not need to tell you that Sparks wrote the source material, but it does anyway.) It even kicks off with maudlin’ voice-over that echoes the opening scene (and the later explained titular significance) of this summer’s hit The Fault in Our Stars. It also does not help matters that Luke Bracey looks nothing like James Marsden, and both are supposed to play the same character, only separated by 21 years.
Marsden and Monaghan are two strong actors who should have gone on to better projects by now. (Sure, she was on True Detective, but the role was sometimes swallowed by the screen presence of the series’ male leads.) They are very hard actors to dislike though, which will help some audiences in getting through a romance that looks tired and painfully conventional.
Beware of spoilers, but go ahead and check out The Best of Me‘s trailer below and let us know what you think.
