Zac Efron and Nicolas Sparks: A Perfect Match

By  · Published on August 25th, 2010

It was inevitable that Zac Efron would eventually be sucked into the sappy world of the writer that continues to churn out schmaltzy crap while believing he’s the next great writer of Greek Tragedies.

If there’s another actor out there better suited for the next Nicolas Sparks movie, I don’t know him. Which is probably a reason he should fire his publicist.

Efron has signed on for The Lucky One where he’ll play – wait for it – a Marine who has been deployed thrice to Iraq and has lived through every tour, he believes, because of the good luck brought to him by a photograph of a woman he doesn’t know. Because it’s sweet, and not creepy, he tracks the woman down when he gets home.

What. The.

I admit openly that The Notebook was a good romance, but everything Sparksian since has been so maudlin and false and forced and evil that it’s been like swallowing a gallon of whale bile while someone swears to you that it’s honey. Or, actually, it might just be like swallowing a gallon of honey. That sounds awful.

I’ve never read the book (I think the guys at Latino Review have), but I can spoil the movie right now if you’d like. Efron’s character will be charming and a bit of a rogue. He’ll come home, track down the girl, and they’ll spark up a relationship despite the fact that trying to find a beautiful woman in a photograph usually earns you a restraining order. They will be blissful until Efron or the girl gets AIDS or gets hit by a car and turned into a paraplegic.

Because that’s how every Nicolas Sparks story goes. Bad stuff, good stuff, horrible tragedy out of nowhere based not at all on the characters or anything they’ve done.

Sparks thinks it’s Greek Tragedy, but it’s actually the cruelest, cheapest kind of heart string yanking there is.

Lucky for everyone, Efron will bring his feminine good looks and Marine-like stature to the next one.

What do you think?

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.