With seven adaptations and many a lookalike in the past several years, there has come to be an understanding of what to expect from Nicholas Sparks films. This does little to parry the punch of stupidity The Lucky One throws at you. As cardboard characters that can’t function at the most basic levels are only matched in their ineptitude by its completely silly, yet predictable story which simply adds to the film’s manipulative and often offensive melodrama.

Zac Efron stars as U.S. Marine Sergeant Logan Thibault, a veteran who returns from his third tour in Iraq convinced that the picture of a woman he found on the battlefield is responsible for his continued survival. Unable to cope with his return to reality, Logan tracks down the whereabouts of the woman and walks (that’s right, walks) from Colorado to Louisiana to find her.  There Logan is hired by the woman, Beth (Taylor Schilling), and her mother, Ellie (Blythe Danner), to work at their dog cannel. Here Logan and Beth slowly form a budding romance, with Beth’s son, Ben (Riley Thomas Stewart), and her jealous, cop ex-husband, Keith (Jay R. Ferguson), in the equation as well.

This is more than enough of a plot description to figure out where things are going, as anyone who has seen a Sparks film knows exactly which are the obligatory plot developments. Lest I discount all of these films, predictability isn’t necessarily always a negative. In fact, many of the tropes present have worked much better in the past, but rely upon characters, actors and a story to sell them. All of these are, unfortunately, completely lost upon The Lucky One, which seems perfectly comfortable to coast through each plot development halfheartedly. Yes, this film has a very specific target audience, but one can’t discount the many issues that riddle this movie.

As no Sparks story would be complete with out it, The Lucky One tosses in a rather arbitrary and self-important message which it attempts to thread throughout the story. Unlike some of his past films, namely The Notebook, the theme here of destiny is so unfulfilled and lazily executed that it actually takes away from the film. Instead of applying this to add spark (pun, intended) to the film, they shove it into pointless and often distracting voiceovers, accompanied by beautiful landscape shots in the name of art, that ruin the film by telling, rather than showing (filmmaking 101, people) from the opening frame.

Subtly clearly isn’t the strong suit of these types of films, and filling each scene with the same, monotonous messages is one thing, however adding in voiceovers which tell the audience how to react and think is both lazy and utterly pointless. Director Scott Hicks does his best to make the film look pleasant, but really there isn’t much work to do here, with the idyllic setting and beautiful stars, who have problems of their own. Each character acts in such an aggravatingly juvenile way, where you know there need to be some serious rewrites when the characters onscreen are so many steps behind the audience.

With completely uninspired plot and characters, The Lucky One does nothing to distinguish itself as anything more than a particularly un-insightful and aggressively un-intelligent installment into the train of Nicholas Sparks romance adaptations that continue to take Hollywood by storm. There are enough cliches and plot holes to dissect all day, but as audiences seem content dismissing the faults of such films in the name of the genre and what it’s trying to say, one can’t deny people will dismiss the film’s faults.

The issue here is that The Lucky One says absolutely nothing sincere.

Grade: D

Rated: PG-13 (for some sexuality and violence.)

The Lucky One opens nationwide on April 20, 2012.