The Best of Me

The Best of Me (2014) is about two former lovers returning to their home town after twenty years, for the funeral of a mutual friend. The film moves between the present and their high school years, slowly explaining why they separated. The source is Nicholas Sparks's novel. Sparks adaptations are a genre in themselves: a small Southern town, a class difference, a family obstacle, letters, and a death. The structure requires four leads, with different actors playing the young and older versions. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan carry the present, Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato the past. That Marsden and Bracey look nothing alike is the most common technical complaint against the film. Michael Hoffman directed. It runs 117 minutes. Good for: Nicholas Sparks adaptations, melodrama, and stories about a second chance missed. Less good for: the plot is predictable and the ending rests on a coincidence engineered to force a reaction. The violent family subplot is never taken seriously, and the characters' decisions shift according to what the story needs.