'The Best of Me' review: Predictable romantic dud

For an hour or so, Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden gamely swim against the current, fighting the torpid tide of tripe that romance novelist Nicholas Sparks sends their way in his latest.

It's sad to watch them strain and struggle and then give up as the lachrymose "The Best of Me" drowns them in a sea of saccharine. Book-smart "white trash" bayou rat Dawson (Marsden) once loved high school sweetheart Amanda (Monaghan), the pushy, spunky rich girl from a family of dentally deficient lowlifes.

But circumstances broke them apart, and when we meet Dawson he's on an oil rig that has a blowout that hurls him into the sea. When he wakes up, he's summoned to the reading of a will. Amanda's been summoned, too. Can love's flame rekindle after 20 years?

Can she ignore the hurt he caused and leave the family she started? Can he come off as noble as he hopes against hope to bust up that family? What do you think?

Gerald McRaney plays a mildly amusing old cuss who took Dawson in when he was a teen. It's his will they read. Through flashbacks, the old man's narration and heartfelt handwritten letters, we learn their past, as performed by Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato, who don't look much at all like the adults they're supposed to be and don't heat this story up.

Director Michael Hoffman ("One Fine Day") was probably never up to the task of polishing this floater. But the adults are interesting to watch, and Monaghan comes close to breaking our heart, once or twice -- a little catch in her voice, a tear.

There's an artless obviousness to Sparks -- the choice of tune they pick as "their song," the tasteful PG-13 sex scenes, the righteous rural way of settling scores. It all plays like a retread of Sparks' earlier hits, but overall, "The Best of Me" plays like the worst of Sparks.

PLOT High school sweethearts are reunited after 20 years.

RATING PG-13 (sexuality, violence, some drug content and brief strong language)

CAST Michelle Monaghan, James Marsden, Gerald McRaney

LENGTH 1:57

BOTTOM LINE The romantic sparks don't fly in this latest Nicholas Sparks tearjerker.