The Lucky One: Critic Reviews

This is romance by numbers and though not execrable, it's a movie for a wet Friday afternoon on the telly.

A through-and-through weepie that's unlikely to convert any Sparks naysayers. The darker hues of its war-based story nonetheless make the sugary excesses easier to swallow.

Even taken as simple schmaltz, 'The Lucky One' lacks the romantic impact of the adaptation of Sparks's 'The Notebook' or even the Channing Tatum-starrer 'Dear John'.

Efron's kind of handsome is more pretty than rugged. Don't worry. The geniuses behind 'The Lucky One' know how to solve that problem. He's got scruff.

The Notebook may have had us blubbing but since then Nicholas Sparks adaptions have offered thin pickings for cinemagoers. For all Efron's boyish charms, this one could be the most ordinary of the lot.

In the end, you can only whistle admiringly at the shameless way this film doles out its cliches and conventions...

What we have here, readers, is a middleweight Sparks movie fit to stand toe-to-toe with Nights in Rodanthe and The Last Song.

A series of montages set to treacly light rock, loosely united by meandering dialogue scenes.

Zac Efron is stuck in no man's land between boy and man. This movie needed a strong male lead and he didn't deliver - not that his hordes of fans will care.

If you like movies that portray, cheesy, perfect romance between perfect and beautiful people, this is for you.

You can sense that the more than competent director, Scott Hicks (the Oscar winning Shine), was trying to cut through the schmaltz and give it a little edge.

Move along, guys. Nothing to see in The Lucky One, unless you're in the doghouse at home and need to make nice. The movie isn't even in 3-D. How else do you expect real men to see two mushy hearts beating as one?

The Lucky One is so dismal, so off-kilter, so nonsensical that even the ever-ready charms of Zac Efron cannot redeem it in the slightest.

I won't elaborate on the plot points. I'll just say that I could have done without the melodramatic elements that punctuate the film and underscore its climax.

This is guy repellent turf. You'll likely want to let her do this one alone. And she ought to think twice.

There's not much to the movie besides handsome sets, sun-dappled photography and a plot as predictable as the verse in a Hallmark card.

Sappy and sentimental, melting like a gooey marshmallow melodrama.

This is a paint-by-numbers romance without a trace of subtlety, wit or sophistication.

It's easy to get lucky when you look like Zac Efron.

A terrible movie through and through, featuring nonsensical plot elements, made-up legal entanglements and turns of coincidence that would make the writers of Scooby Doo blush

Melodramatic comfort food for the Lifetime Channel crowd (Full Content Movie Review for Parents also available)

With zero chemistry and laden with cliches, The Lucky One won't leave audiences feeling lucky to have spent two hours of their lives taking in a screening.

Exactly the kind of sappy hogwash that Efron's detractors think is the only thing he's capable of doing.