17-year-old Jade Butterfield graduates from high school with an impressive college scholarship but few friends, focusing on her studies rather than a social life. David, another senior, has had a crush on her for years but never acted on it.
Jade asks her parents, Hugh and Anne, for a graduation party as her gift, inviting her entire class. At first, it consists only of her parents' friends, but David gets everyone to go to Jade's party by sabotaging his ex-girlfriend Jenny's party. Jade and David are caught nearly kissing; Hugh disapproves of David, feeling he will adversely affect his daughter's medical-school internship.
David makes a failed attempt to please Hugh by fixing a car which belonged to Jade's late brother Chris. Late that night, Jade and David make love. Jade declines her internship to spend the summer with David, and Hugh decides to take the family away to their lake house. Jade is upset, knowing Hugh's motive is to distance her from David, so she brings David to the lake house. Hugh's wife Anne asks him to give David a chance.
One night, David catches Hugh cheating on Anne; the following morning, Hugh intimidates David into keeping quiet about it. David and Jade, along with their friend Mace, Jenny, Jade’s brother Keith, and Keith's girlfriend Sabine, sneak into a zoo after-hours. Jealous of David and Jade, Jenny calls the police; when they arrive, David stays behind so the others can escape. Hugh bails David out of jail on the condition he ends it with Jade.
Hugh lies to Jade and says that David has abandoned her, but Jade doesn’t believe him and escapes in the family car. David meets Mace at a diner, who has secretly invited Jenny to join them, reminding David that he had friends and a life before he and Jade started dating. Jade walks in as Jenny attempts to get close to David, assumes he is cheating, and storms out of the restaurant. Jade and David have a fight which ends with Jade driving off and getting into an accident. At the hospital, Hugh gives David’s father a restraining order to keep David away from Jade. Jade tries to contact David, having realized he hadn't been unfaithful, but David’s father won't allow it due to the restraining order. Over the next few months, David and Jade each try to see other people; but both are unhappy.
David runs into Anne at a bookstore, where she tells him she admires his and Jade's love and arranges for them to meet. They reaffirm their love and plan to run away that night; meanwhile Anne confronts Hugh about his obsession with destroying David.
At home, Hugh fights with Keith, who announces he is moving in with Sabine, and Anne opts to join them. Hugh then discovers Jade preparing to leave with David and charges outside, knocking over a lit candle and attacking David. Jade rushes to his defense, proclaiming that it was Hugh, not David, who tore the family apart.
The defeated Hugh goes back inside, discovering the fire started in Chris's room. David runs in to save Hugh, who is struggling to gather up Chris' possessions. When David falls unconscious, Hugh drops everything and helps him to safety instead. Outside, they put aside their differences while waiting for medical attention.
Anne and Hugh amicably separate, but remain determined to rediscover their love. Jade and David join Sabine and Keith at their wedding as maid of honor and best man. Both couples camp on the beach that night; sharing David's bedroll, Jade fondly recalls how her first love was everything all at once, the kind of love worth fighting for.
The first trailer was released on December 23, 2013.[6] The film earned a domestic gross of $23,438,250, barely over its estimated production budget of $20 million.[3]
Home media
Endless Love was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 27, 2014.
Reception
Endless Love has received negative reviews from film critics. Criticism was mainly made towards the many liberties taken with the original source material. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 16% based on 93 reviews, with the consensus: "Blander than the original Endless Love and even less faithful to the source material, this remake is clichéd and unintentionally silly."[7] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 30 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews from critics.[8]
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: "This Endless Love is a photo shoot, not a movie. It'd play better as a slideshow of jpgs. Even nine-year-old girls ought to cry foul on this movie's endless blandness."[9] Ronnie Scheib of Variety wrote: "In The Greatest (2009) and Country Strong (2010), Feste proved herself quite skilled, if not especially innovative, at limning her characters’ emotional travails. But subtlety, complexity and even the slightest modicum of realism elude her here."[10] Stephanie Merry of The Washington Post said "The movie feels like Nicholas Sparks fan fiction."[11]
Film historian Leonard Maltin gave the remake a more positive review than the original, giving it two out of a possible four stars (he gave its 1981 predecessor zero out of four, rating it a "BOMB"). Yet he described the newer film as "Mediocre ... This is sure to connect with its target audience -- and it's Oscarworthy compared to the 1981 version -- yet it remains overwrought and pointless for fans of the novel. Moreover, Lionel Richie's title tune (the only memorable aspect of the original) is sorely missed here."[12]
In 2013, after reading the screenplay for the film, Scott Spencer - the author of the novel on which the film was based - wrote that "It's about one hundred pages, and the only ones that were not dreary were sciatica inducing".[13] In 2014 he wrote that his novel "has been even more egregiously and ridiculously misunderstood" in making the remake than in the 1981 film.[14]
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