Love Story
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Movie Reviews of Love Story
Movie Review: Where Do I Begin?
Summary: 5 Stars
The picture holds up, that is, you may hate it but it hardly ever looks "60s" or "70s." Both O'Neal and MacGraw are rather good, I can't imagine what torment Arthur Hiller put Ali MacGraw through to get her to deliver those line readings which, by and large, are pretty appropriate and hardly ever wooden as she usually is in other vehicles. I femember years later watching the miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR in which she plays Natalie Jastrow and thinking, in retrospect, that Arthur Hiller deserved an Oscar for making her seem like a human being in LOVE STORY. There's one scene in which she opens an invitation for Oliver's father to his 60th birthday party, a sign she thinks that her father in law might be melting in his opposition to their marriage, and yet she can't make Oliver understand how much this means to her and how very much she wants to go to the party.
Instead he coldly forces her to RSVP and say that they won't go. Her frustration and pain while she's dialing the phone are palpable, real. PLUS she's dressed exquisitely, in a khaki green miniskirt with a metallic green and black belt that would look perfectly in vogue today. It's the kind of scene that sticks with you, especially in a movie so universally reviled, a movie that has millions of fans and yet, for others, it seems to have gone down in history as the sappiest and stupidest movie ever made.
What is with the actor Walker Reynolds, who plays Ryan O'Neal's best friend and racketball partner? He's like a blond, somewhat stockier Illya Kuryakin. The racquetball scenes with the two men in crazily tight white cotton shorts and T-shirts is like something out of a Bruce Weber campaign, and their subsequent shower scene should be frozen forever as a certain kinf of Abercrombie & Fitch porn. The actor is appealing and yet, apparently, never made another movie before or since. You wonder why he was even in the picture at all. (He plays "Ray Stratton.") The focus of LOVE STORY is almost entirely on one or the other of the two leads, and Jennifer appears to have no girlfriends at all. She exists in a cocoon first of forbidden love, and then in a hospital bed, after an interlude of watching Oliver skate in a white cable-knit sweater, then they go out for cocoa, and then he asks her what they should do for the rest of the day, she says, "let's go to the hospital." The two of them stagger in a long shot out of Central Park into a cab. It really looks as though she's going to die in the snow, her legs crumbling in on themselves like Bambi trying to stand up. When she made it into the cab I was sighing real relief. I guess somewhere along the way I started to fall for the two lovers. Her snotty, tart, foul-mouthed "attitude" didn't bother me, though it remains startlingly unsaccharine, as though Ruth Gordon should have been playing the part.
One more scene deserves admiration, the one in which Ray Milland, having written a check for Ryan O'Neal for $5000, money to secure an abortion for another girl (or so Milland thinks), sits there ruffling his checkbook after his son has left him with the unexpected words, "Thank you, Father." The expressions which play across Milland's bemused, wrinkled old face are priceless. You can read his thoughts with a radical transparency, it's a tough acting job and he excels for a minute. Otherwise he's hampered by a script filled with Freudian cliches.
Movie Review: Not the Schmaltz You'd Be Led To Believe
Summary: 5 Stars
The last time I saw "Love Story" was on a network showing circa 1976 on the family black-and-white when I was twelve and my sister was thirteen. What do you know about love at that age but my sister was all blubbery. I've just celebrated my first wedding anniversary with my wife and I wanted to get her a quintessential romance flick so why not but..."Love Story". Unless you've never been in love or are inherently cynical you can't appreciate how this film captures the experience of being totally immersed in another person. The film's catchphrase, "Love means never having to never say your sorry" doesn't seem that corny. Even the film's tragic conclusion doesn't seem contrived or manipulative. I think it helps that the film's stars, Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw, have kinetic chemistry even though I believe they were married to others at the time(MacGraw was married to Paramount honcho Robert Evans). An interesting dichotemy here is how the film presents O'Neal and MacGraw's fathers. O'Neal is saddled with a rich controlling father (Ray Milland) whereas MacGraw's father (John Marley) is a widower and MacGraw kind of assumes the spousal role in her relationship to him. Now I don't know if that explains the attraction between the two leads but it's interesting food for thought. "Love Story" kind of get's short shrift these days, dismissed by some as more of a dated cultural phenomenon than a great film, which is a shame. "Love Story" is a film where you have to shed your reservations or inhibitions and accept it for what it is.Movie Review: Romantic, gut-wrenching, brilliant? Check.
Summary: 5 Stars
Today, romance movies and "tearjerkers" are usually too sappy, lame, hackneyed, and just not very good. But this movie, although it's now 35 years old, is a "timeless classic", and it is just as powerful today as it was in 1970 when it was released. It's a refreshingly direct and simple story about love; about two people entirely devoted to each other. Oliver (O'Neal) is a "preppie millionaire" and Jennifer (MacGraw) is "social zero". They meet at college, fall in love, and eventually marry. After overcoming social barriers, arrogant parents (Oliver's parents "cut him off" after he marries Jenny despite their protestations) and poverty during the first couple of years of their marriage, they seemingly have it all. Oliver becomes a lawyer and Jenny no longer has to work tirelessly to provide the basic necessities, and the couple can now afford to start a family. But just as they had the world at their feet, they're rocked by the news that Jenny is, in fact, dying (of cancer). Indeed, it's heart-wrenchingly sad and touching, and it's a hard person who doesn't at least tear up at the sight of Jenny dying in her loving husband's arms. The movie hits all the right emotional buttons, and you share all the love and heartache Jenny and Oliver go through. O'Neal and MacGraw are brilliant and have great chemistry, and of course the haunting (and now legendary) theme music perfectly captures the intensity and feelings between the couple. Indeed, a true love story. And the best one at that.Movie Review: Love means never having to say you're sorry
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm surprised that tagline has not been used for the other people's reviews on here - though slightly cheesy and predictable, it does have everything to do with this film's incredible power and poignancy.
Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal were virtual nobodies before they played love-struck students Jenny and Oliver in this college movie set around Harvard and Radcliffe. Being a Boston student myself I can tell you one of the most amazing things about this movie is the shooting around this incredible city.
However, there's a lot more to "Love Story" than setting - the story is basically yet another modern day Romeo and Juliet - though not exactly, by any means. It's refreshingly simple and touching - and was such a major hit in 1970 (so says my mother) that it attracted around-the-block lines for weeks on end.
The catchphrase, Love means never having to say you're sorry, came 13th in a recent AFI list of top movie quotes of all time - and really, it does catch the essence of this great love movie. These two souls really do understand one another, and if we take nothing else away from this film, it is the understanding of that love, and how it relates to all other loves we have ever had. You really FEEL their love - because of the film's simplicity and captivating flirtatious manner of acting.
Don't miss out on Love Story - it's beautiful and it will stay with you for a long time.
Movie Review: The Most Beautiful Love Story
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the classic story of Oliver (Ryan O'Neal) and Jennifer (Ali MacGraw), the star crossed lovers whose simple romance is one of the most beautiful stories ever told on film. Oliver is a rich, mildly arrogant hockey playing Harvard student who falls for Jennifer, a poor wisecracking, slightly profane, Radcliffe student. The two begin dating, fall in love, and marry, much to the consternation of Oliver's parents, who cut him off financially. Oliver struggles through law school on Jennifer's salary as a teacher. Upon graduating, Oliver gets a good job at a high powered law firm and Jennifer quits teaching in the hopes that she can become pregnant. Then, fate intervenes. Jennifer is diagnosed with leukemia and their world is destroyed. The musical score is hauntingly dramatic. All of the cast give great performances, particularly Ray Milland as Oliver's father and John Marley as Jennifer's lonely father, Phil. Also recommended is "Oliver's Story", the sequel film, which is not a very good film except that it allows you to see what happens to Oliver in the aftermath of his loss.