G R O U N D Z E R OG3FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2014 LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR

MOVIES

By ROGER MOORE McClatchy-Tribune News Service

Kids, this is not your parents’ “Endless Love.”

Scott Spencer’s novel of a romantic obsession so strong that it fl irts with mental illness has had its sharp edges rubbed o� , its dramatic weight lifted and its focus shifted in this ad-aptation from the director of “Country Strong.”

There’s nothing danger-ous about this teen love on steroids. There’s no show-case sex scene, the selling point of the infamous 1981 Brooke Shields/Franco Zef-fi relli adaptation. The kids here come o� as perfectly reasonable; the adults are the problem — but even their e� orts to separate the lovebirds are watered down.

Still, even without that tragic Romeo/Juliet edge or the hit theme song by Lio-nel Ritchie and Diana Ross, it does have a stellar cast who keep things real even if the lighter touches turn this into a far more conventional teen romance.

Alex Pettyfer is David, the car mechanic’s son who falls — hard — for the gorgeous Jade, played by the supermodel-skinny “Carrie” co-star Gabriella Wilde. So we get it.

They graduate from high school together, never hav-ing spoken. But David, he’s seen “the possibility of us.” And Jade, shut o� from her peers, smothered by a fam-ily still mourning a brother

who died two years before, is simply swept o� her feet.

He rescues her ill-planned graduation party, and when he gets o� on the wrong foot with her stern surgeon dad (Bruce Green-wood, terrifi c), mechanic boy David fi nds an automo-tive way to make it up to the doctor, fi xing up the fam-ily’s ancient MGB.

Jade’s mom (Joely Rich-ardson) is touched. Jade’s brother (Rhys Wakefi eld of “The Purge”) is charmed.

Only Dr. Hugh (Green-wood) is seeing red. He’s got his daughter’s future planned, and those plans start with a summer intern-ship. The boy is interfering.

The way this story is supposed to work is that Dad’s threats and e� orts to keep the kids apart works on David’s fragile, love-sick mind and makes him desperate. Pettyfer (“Magic Mike”) doesn’t suggest that, as this David is written as all lovesick and moon-eyed. He’s harmless. Jade is in love for the fi rst time, but Wilde doesn’t get across the breathless yearning that raises the stakes of their af-fair when Daddy pulls more than a few tricks out of his bag to try to split them up.

Robert Patrick is winning as David’s gru� but indul-gent dad, and Dayo Okeniyi scores as David’s goofy, loveable pal Mace.

Director/co-writer Shana Feste concocts what could have been an engaging if

stunningly predictable “Endless Love,” from the pop music montage court-ship sequences to Dad’s driving the boy out on a boat to set him straight about what’s not going to happen with his daughter.

Greenwood and Richard-son make a fi ne, discordant couple, and the young leads have a certain chemistry. If only Feste had realized she’d stripped almost all the confl ict out of the story, that you can’t fl ip motiva-tions and turn everybody into “reasonable” people and have anything like an interesting drama left over.

Even the Brooke Shields version got that right.

gets reinterpreted in watered-down remake

Universal Pictures

Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer star in “Endless Love,” the story of a privileged girl and a charismatic boy whose instant desire sparks a love affair.

Endless LoveGrade: CDirector: Shana FesteCast: Alex Pettyfer,

Gabriella Wilde, Joely Richardson, Robert Pat-rick, Bruce Greenwood

Rated: PG-13 (for sexu-al content, brief partial nudity, some language and teen partying)

Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes

Now Showing: Grand, East Park, SouthPointe

The Reel Story: This remake of a 1981 fi lm with Brooke Shields sidesteps the tragic for a more reasonable approach from its charac-ters, but that strips the fi lm of its original tension and drama.

REVIEW

‘Endless Love’