DAYO OKENIYI AND ALEX PETTYFER IN ENDLESS LOVE

New variations

Scott Spencer's popular novel Endless Love is already famous, or notorious, to movie fans from Franco Zeferelli's 1981 screen version, which departed from the book in several key ways -- one of several reasons for that movie's near-universal condemnation by critics. This one will do no better. As very loosely re-adapted here, it's Nicholas Sparks stuff with a focus on class issues and the claustrophobia of a neurotic rich man's family. Steamy teenage passion -- star-crossed lovers -- a cardiologist turned cold by the loss of his favorite son -- it's all been (slightly) updated, with a best friend who's black. The material, with its focus on adult obstacles to youthful passion, remains emotionally involving, whatever the literary merit or cinematic flair of Shana Faste.

Different cast of course. The role of the younger brother Keith (in 1981 played by "Jimmy" -- James -- Spader) is taken on by a 26-year-old Australian (Rhys Wakefiel). The star role of lover boy David Elliot, now a high school senior from the wrong side of the tracks whom icy blonde rich girl Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) falls in love with, is strongly handled by 24-year-old Brit Alex Pettyfer --though he naturally looks a bit old for the part. Gone of course is 16-year-old Brooke Shields, whose presence in Zeferelli's movie helped make critics want to heap abuse upon it.

This version departs more from the novel than 1981's and is much toned down. Economic statuses have been flipped around. Jade's family in 1981 were hippies, allowing the teenagers to make love freely in the house. Her boyfriend David was the one from a well-off family. This time David's from a modest, single-parent home whose dad, Harry (Robert Patrick), runs a garage. David's SAT scores are through the roof, but he has no college plans. Maybe to accommodate older actors, the story begins with high school graduation, and David has been in love with Jade since elementary school, but never dared to introduce himself in all these years. David's passion isn't twisted as in 1981 -- when he burned down Jade's folks' house by accident trying to get their attention and was sent to a mental hospital for two years. A key change: in the novel, everything is told in rueful retrospect, adding a layer that both movies choose to lose, leading in both cases to weak, cop-out endings, the new one, particularly, softened and upbeat.

This new David is a sterling character, but he was arrested and did time in juvie in the past for assaulting his mother's lover. (He's "not that person" anymore now, of course.) The letters to David at the nut house in the novel that were all intercepted have their modest, if devastating, counterpart in 2014 in the one letter of recommendation for David written by Jade's mom that her dad throws away, scotching his college plans.

Faste blends themes of class and family control with an idea from her 2009 debut movie The Greatest, which she also wrote, a drama, according to IMDb, in part about " a family trying to get over the loss of their son." Jade and her younger brother Keith (played by the Australian) receive little affection from their father Hugh Butterfield (Bruce Greenwood) because he is obsessed by the loss of his favorite son Chris, who died of cancer a few years ago. He's interested in Jade only to manipulate her: he's not only pushed her to enter Brown as a pre-med in the fall but gotten her an "internship" she's supposed to start during the summer aimed to fast-track her into med school. Is Hugh suffering and confused, or just a mean, manipulative man? The movie wants us to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it won't wash.

Hugh's scheme for his daughter is threatened when the previously isolated and friendless Jade falls hopelessly in love with David. They meet-cute when he and his best friend Mace (Dayo Okeniyi), working as parking valets outside a fancy club, steal a rich prick's Maserati for a joyride and drag Jade along while her parents and brother are lunching inside. This leads to a major fracas: thus the love starts out accompanied by trouble. Jade and David's mutual passion is soon intense, and Jade abandons the internship. Cue montage of fun activities. But do not cue sex scenes, because though in Scott Spencer's novel the sex is constant and near-porn steamy, love-making isn't shown here. This is a PG-13 film all the way, leading to some odd interrupted moments.

It's clear that Jade's wealthy father cordially detests David from the first. When the two go out on a small boat together we're almost surprised Hugh doesn't try to drown the boy. But David charms the rest of the family, including Jade's mother Anne (Joely Richardson, another Brit, in a heartfelt performance), who later writes that letter of recommendation when David decides to apply to a college where she has a connection. It's not completely clear whether Hugh is just a troubled and confused man or an asshole, but the way the part is written makes the asshole side predominate, and his much-ignored and downgraded son Keith calls him one.

Faste means us to believe in Hugh's repentance, after an assault, a car accident that sends one of the principals to the hospital, and a fire that damages the Butterfield mansion and leads to an act of heroism by David. But the upbeat finale doesn't wash. We've come to dislike Hugh too intensely even to care much whether or not he's had a change of heart, though David's forgiveness -- his cautious pat on Hugh's back is a nice touch -- fits in with his too-good-to-be true character.

It's all kind of nonsense, with contemporary party scenes and glitzy rich folks' accoutrements that are irrelevant and mildly repulsive. But if you let yourself get into the story, however uneven its tone and unconvincing its details, its situations and emotions may well move you. They become "objective correlatives" for whatever residual feelings of parental rejection, lingering grief, or frustrated love you may be harboring. As in earlier versions, there is intense emotion here, however over-the-top it may seem, and it's a compulsive watch as the book was a page-turner for millions. But Shana Faste has not thought through her plot and characters or provided convincing and rounded characters. Faste's previous outing was Country Strong (2009), with Gwenyth Paltrow and Garrett Hedlund, which likewise was involving, even though you knew it wasn't that good a movie. That may be Faste's forte -- piling on the emotion, artistic merit be damned -- and could keep her working in Hollywood.

Endless Love, 103 mins., opened in the US and UK 14 Feb. 2014. Metacritic rating: 30.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.