Endless Love Movie Review

By: Lynn Barker

She’s a smart rich girl living a quiet, silent life since her brother died. He’s a blue-collar boy who has loved her from afar all through school. Are these two meant for each other? Can they survive family drama to be together? What do you think?

David working at his dad's mechanic shop

High School Ends

It’s graduation day and 18-year-old David Elliot (Alex Pettyfer) is still worshiping 17-year-old Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) from afar. She is reclusive and has no friends due to her withdrawal from life when her older brother died. David’s friend Mace (Dayo Okeniyi who played Thresh in The Hunger Games) jokes that she is too far above David for him to win her. When David is parking cars at a posh restaurant and Jade arrives with her family, the two meet cute and sparks fly. David and Mace talk Jade into taking a joyride with them in a sports car owned by a total jerk. She’s never had so much fun!

David and Jade at her graduation party

Dad Has Plans

Jade’s dad (Bruce Greenwood), a successful heart surgeon, expects her to do an early internship before going to college to be a doctor. She is wondering where her fun teen years went. Jade’s mom (Joely Richardson) is on her side. When jerk car owner insults Mace, David and then Jade, David decks him. All Jade’s dad sees is David being violent. David and Mace are both fired. David’s supportive, mechanic dad (Robert Patrick) warns him to take it easy. David was in trouble with the law before.

Endless summer love

The Party

Hoping the kids from school will come, Jade has a graduation party. When only posh adults show up, David makes some calls that bring the gang attending another party over to Jade’s place where they all have a blast, including Jade’s remaining brother Keith (Rhys Wakefield) until Jade’s dad catches Jade and David kissing in a closet. We see that Jenny (Emma Rigby), David’s ex, is super jealous. David is polite to Jade’s dad and she sneaks out to kiss him after the party.

Mace with David at the party

Mom is Impressed

David gets Jade’s mom on his team when he fixes the sports car belonging to her son Chris who died. It just makes dad mad. At a family dinner he stresses to Jade that David isn’t going to college and his statement that finding true love means more than anything is just stupid. Jade’s mom likes David’s ‘tude more and more.

Jade's mom listens to David

Together

David sneaks back into Jade’s house and the two finally make love (it’s a huge house so her parents don’t know). Next day, Jade tells David she has to leave for her internship in two weeks. They go on a mad dating spree trying to make the most of the time left to them. I love you’s are exchanged. Jade’s dad moves the family to their lake house after Jade blows off the internship to spend the rest of the summer with David. She invites him to join them. Dad is furious but when David catches him making out with a friend’s wife and David calls him on it, dad threatens him.

First night together

David’s Past

When Mace, Jenny and friends convince Jade then David to break into the local zoo to get high and have fun, they go along only resulting in jealous Jenny calling the cops, and who is arrested? David, while the others get to safety. Dad has looked into David’s past and tells Jade that he was arrested years back for attacking his mom’s secret lover when he found them together. He’s just too violent. Dad will only help get David out of jail if she won’t see him again. Dad makes David think Jade is through with him.

Mace and David on graduation day

The Road Back

After several difficult complications, David tells Jade he’s not good enough for her and walks away. At college, she has a boyfriend and David gets back together briefly with Jenny. Jade’s mom and dad argue over how dad treated David, including not mailing a recommendation letter to college that mom had written for David. When Jade comes home from college for a visit, the two rush into each other’s arms. At home later, Jade is leaving town with David, when a fire starts in her dead brother’s old room. David saves Jade’s dad who finally changes his opinion of the teen. David and Jade go on a fun trip to California.

Jade's mom and dad argue over David

Wrapping Up

Critics have labeled Endless Love “a Nicolas Sparks romance for a younger audience”. Well? It’s Valentine’s Day so what is wrong with that?  Sure, there are a few corny cliché moments (like when Jade’s dad takes David out alone in the family boat, we are sure he’s going to toss him overboard) but Alex Pettyfer (of Magic Mike) and Gabriella Wilde (the last Carrie movie and Three Musketeers films) do seem to have chemistry and their relationship is believable.

Jade tells dad she's invited David to the lake

Supporting actors like Dayo Okeniyi playing lovesick David’s pal Mace is hilarious and the “parent” actors Bruce Greenwood, Joely Richardson and Robert Patrick are very believable as is Rhys Wakefield as Jade’s neglected brother Keith.

Music is fun and appropriate to the action but there is almost too much of it throughout and that can be distracting. The story is melodramatic and predictable to begin with, with all of the “bad guy” troubles for the young couple coming from Jade’s dad who can be mega-evil due to his own issues over not being able to save his son from dying of cancer.

Hanging out at the lake

Overall, however, if you’ve ever been madly in love or hope to be, as a young person you can identify and root for Jade and her guy David to get past family crisis, jealous ex-girlfriends and an objecting parent out to do anything, no matter how evil to keep them apart. You can buy into the mantra “If it’s true love, you have to fight for it”. This remake of 1981’s Endless Love is, as I overheard teen girls saying on exiting the theater, “So sweet”, just like candy and flowers from your crush on Valentine’s Day. We go three stars for this love day date movie.

Endless Love Movie Rating: 

Endless Love Poster

Endless Love is in theaters now!

Endless Love Trailer