Endless Love

Jade, seventeen, on a scholarship and with almost no friends, spends a summer with David, who has watched her from a distance for years. Her father Hugh opposes it, and as his opposition grows the family starts coming apart. Shana Feste directed. It is the second adaptation of Scott Spencer's novel, after the 1981 film. Alex Pettyfer plays David and Gabriella Wilde plays Jade. Universal released it on 14 February 2014, Valentine's Day. On a 20 million dollar budget it took 23.4 million domestically, barely breaking even. The reviews were heavily negative. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 16 percent, with critics calling it clichéd and unintentionally silly. Peter Travers in Rolling Stone finished it in one line: this Endless Love is a photo shoot, not a movie. The novelist Scott Spencer attacked the adaptation too, calling the screenplay dreary and saying his book had been even more egregiously and ridiculously misunderstood than in the 1981 version. Who it is for: viewers who like teenage romantic melodrama. Who it is not for: readers of the novel. The book is about an obsessive and disturbing love, and the film turns it into a clean story about young people.