Dire

Rating: 2/10 (15 June 2006)

Ryan Gosling is far too good an actor for this mawkish rubbish about young love and old love and eternal love. I knew things were bad when I started admiring the ducks on the lake. Gosling is the boy from the wrong side of the tracks who has a summer romance with rich girl Rachel McAdams, (who has the kind of face you are unlikely to remember from one movie to the next). They lose each other and just as predictably find each other again and all the time nice old codger James Garner tells the story of their 'great' love to Gena Rowlands who has senile dementia. No brownie points for filling in the gaps.
Rowlands is sensational considering she doesn't have anything to do but look vacant and Joan Allen is simply brilliant as McAdams' rich bitch of a mother. The fact that Allen is one of the best actresses in America helps. She can rise above the most mediocre of material and this is truly mediocre; appallingly scripted, indifferently directed and if a few members of the cast are giving it more than it's worth, they can still hardly be said to be redeeming the material.