The Lucky One (2012)

Another classic case of wrong casting and Boy - what a disaster. Why in the hell someone would pick up Zac Efron of all to play a Marine? Even if he plays a 25 year old, it isn't good enough convincing for me. He remains wooden for the most of the part as if all marines are supposed to be expressionless. His expressions remain same even while he is killing enemies or making love. At times his expressions are like "what am I doing here?" and same is what you think by mid way. Its a classic waste of time and money in the name of a love story.

Give it a royal ignore if you like love stories or the one's with a little drama thrown in between. Its too boring. Starting is so slow and it just drags till the mid way when you really see some conflicts. But before you think of any action taking place, everything falls in right places and everybody is happy before it all ends. You see, director was actually making a feel good movie. I wonder how did it made so much money in Hollywood.

Zac is a marine posted in Iraq. While the war goes on - one fine day he locates a mirror like object at some distance. As he walks to picks it up - a missile lands where he was sitting and everybody else is killed in the freak blast. It was actually a picture of a girl which saves his life. Second time again while he is traveling in a humvy they come across a blast and again he is saved cause he was looking at the picture. So, he decides - if he survives the war - he will go and find the girl and thank her for keeping him alive.

Finally, he comes back home and takes a cross country drive to locate the girl. As he meets her for the first time, she thinks he is there to apply for a job of a dog trainer / cleaner. He happily takes it up thinking he will tell her about the whole story later. Taylor Schilling is beautiful and wears hot pants mostly. Her job is to just look good and smile. She has a background tOo and is a single mother with a young kid. They fall for each other gradually and some tough times later everything falls in place and movie ends on a happy note.

They actually tried too hard to make it a mushy love story but it fails big time to hold your interest. Its so so simple and highly predictable that you actually know what's going to happen next and it does. What does not work for me - is the cast. I had so many expectations from them. Even the drama isn't convincing. I had full sympathy with the guy who plays her husband, as he had to play a villain out of nowhere cause the story goes nowhere without a twist. Its another movie you just see and forget. Its totally misleading to write on the poster - "from the acclaimed author" of "notebook" and "dear john".