This movie is supposed to be a comedy, a comedy about being single in NYC. Of course we have all seen movies like this before and after you have seen a few of these, they all seem to blend together into a generic idea about how difficult it is to be single. One movie that comes to mind is 2009’s “He’s just not that into you” which is remarkably similar to this movie in terms of the overall message and the attempts at humor.

As always my test of a comedy movie is “did anyone who was in the theater laugh?” and the answer to that question was for the most part no. This is also a movie with several different stories which are going on in parallel and some of the characters know about or are related to each other and others are not. These kinds of movies can be tedious to watch because they are just too many stories and too many characters to follow. It is nice to see Dakota Johnson acting in a movie after the horrible Fifty Shades of Grey came out this time last year. After seeing Fifty Shades of Grey, I wondered if Dakota’s career was not over before it even started. Rebel Wilson is also in this movie and she was the exact character she plays in all of her movies, mainly the Pitch Perfect series. To be honest, I wonder what is so funny or entertaining about her or about her milking the humor out of being so fat.  For me the same character she seems to play in all the movies she is in is just not that funny. Leslie Mann is the 3rd major star in this cast, and like Wilson, she seems to be the same person in all the movies she is in and because of this she might start to reduce the longevity of her career in acting.

At best this movie was average and not very funny, at its worse this movie was just another run of the mill dating movie. For these reasons, I cannot recommend it.

How to be Single – IMDB

This movie is essentially about the greatest small boat rescue mission in the history of the coast guard when an oil tanker broke in half and 33 crew members had to be rescued by one small boat. When you see what happened, you wonder why a decision to attempt a rescue like this with so small a boat was even attempted. Unfortunately this story to me did not seem compelling enough to make a movie about and after 2 hours of this movie which was entirely shot at night in the snow and the cold, you wondered why it was made in the first place.

This movie was slow moving, very boring in a number of areas and because it was entirely filmed at night made the whole 2 hours even more slow and depressing. The story is somewhat risky and interesting and the special effects were just OK, but I was looking at my watch frequently wondering when the whole ordeal was going to be over. For these reasons I cannot recommend this movie.

The Finest Hours – IMDB

The Choice is another Nicholas Sparks book that has been made into a movie and 11 of his books have been made into a movie so far, which is an incredible number . Everyone would probably agree that his best movie was The Notebook , which came out in 2004.

Of all the best selling authors right now have to figure that the most successful is Nicholas Sparks if you combine the number of books sold with the number of books made into a movie.  Clearly the all time winner in net worth would be the author of the Harry Potter books JK Rowling, who reportedly is a billionaire. All of the 11 Sparks movies, with the possible exception of the Notebook, follow the same formulaic paradigm.  They are all about a love story that involve some major conflict and then a climax and almost always some kind of a happy ending and many attempts to make you cry.   This movie “The Choice” is not an exception to the Sparks formula and at times it seems you are watching some part of the other 10 movies that have been made from his books, but despite this this movie works because of the solid acting from two relatively unknown actors Benjamin Walker and Theresa Palmer and a story that for the most part was well told.  As with all Sparks movie there are scenes of heavy drama and major conflict, but despite these reminders of other Sparks movies, the movie still works.

Despite the formula-like plot and story I do recommend this movie.

The Choice – IMDB