Endless Love

Never being a great fan of Franco Zeffirelli's sudsy 1981 love story about star-crossed teens, starring Brooke Shields, I wasn't surprised by the low quality of this maudlin melodramatic remake. Although Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) and David Elliot (Alex Pettyfer) are members of the same Atlanta graduating class, it seems that she's spent the past four years so buried in her studies that she never looked up and saw the handsomest hunk in her high school. But he's had his eye on her, and when he's parking cars at a posh inn, he attracts her attention. Under the watchful eye of her cardiologist father, Hugh (Bruce Greenwood), Jade is headed for Brown University to study medicine and will spend the summer working with a high-profile surgeon. Although her mom (Joely Richardson) and brother (Rhys Wakefield) have gone through their mourning periods, her dad is still grieving over his older son's death from cancer—and he's furious when lonely Jade ditches the internship and invites David to join them at the family's magnificent lakeside summer home. The friction between the ardent working-class suitor and upper middle-class protective dad is palpable, presumably because David's widower dad (Robert Patrick) is an auto mechanic and David has a blemish in his rebellious past. Tepidly co-scripted by director Shana Feste, Endless Love is both clichéd and contrived, discarding the tragic, pivotal elements of pyromania, prison, and political activism that were key in Scott Spenser's 1979 bestselling novel. Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (18 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are deleted, extended, and alternate scenes (30 min.), an extended ending (3 min.), and bonus DVD, digital, and UltraViolet copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a disappointing remake.] (S. Granger)