The Lucky One
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: April 20, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
21
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 19, 2012
Efron, who wears an "All glory is fleeting" tattoo on his back and a soulful look on his face, gets to be more of a grown-up in The Lucky One than in most of what he's done before. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleApr 19, 2012
The most fortunate thing about The Lucky One is that despite a plot hole so big it could generate its own gravity field, it's still not a bad movie. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertApr 18, 2012
The Lucky One is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 18, 2012
The Lucky One delivers what's expected from it: a heartfelt romantic melodrama with attractive actors in the lead roles; gauzy, moody photography; a saccharine score; and all the heat that a PG-13 production can muster. Read full review
60
Total FilmEmma DibdinMay 7, 2012
A through-and-through weepie that's unlikely to convert any Sparks naysayers. The darker hues of its war-based story nonetheless make the sugary excesses easier to swallow. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 20, 2012
Efron's stopped-clock seriousness is more convincing on a melancholy loverboy than it is on a melancholy soldier. We can't quite sense the harrowing torment of lives lost before his eyes, but we can sense the sweet anguish of being around the woman you adore. It'll have to do. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyApr 19, 2012
The Sparks-styled romance has almost become its own movie genre - predictable, pure of heart, sentimental and never straying from the boy-meets-girl basics, or the surface, for that matter - and in that The Lucky One delivers. Read full review
60
MovielineAlison WillmoreApr 19, 2012
The Lucky One aspires to but never reaches the grandly melodramatic heights of the über-Sparks adaptation "The Notebook," though a reconciliation embrace in an outdoor shower of some sort seems deliberately staged to evoke the earlier feature. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderTal RosenbergApr 22, 2012
As long as Efron's shirt comes off, he could play an accountant and no one in the target audience would care. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianM. E. RussellApr 19, 2012
When it sticks to its central flirtation, the latest movie based on a Nicholas Sparks romance, The Lucky One, is blandly pleasant enough. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigApr 19, 2012
So the cliches are as thick as a vat of honey. And the love story proves just as syrupy. But for those who lap up this sappy vision of romance, it contains all the key ingredients. Read full review
50
TimeMary PolsApr 19, 2012
As a person who removes a woman's clothing in the half light of a Southern afternoon, Efron acquits himself reasonably well. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 19, 2012
The leads' chemistry in The Lucky One is more theoretical than actual. Still, the sunsets and sunrises and sunbeams through the windowpanes fall easily on the eyes. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsApr 18, 2012
As a pretty, low-stakes bayou romance The Lucky One works well enough. When asked to carry any kind of dramatic weight, however, it collapses. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanApr 18, 2012
The Lucky One doesn't have the schlock rapture of "The Notebook" (the one Sparks adaptation that has really worked). The trouble with the movie isn't that it's too girly-swoony; it's that it tries to achieve emotion through glowy sunsets and a paint-by-numbers script. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundApr 17, 2012
At this point, Sparksian romances unfold via their own preordained formula, and measures of their merits largely hinge on how well each can bend the cookie-cutter. Read full review
40
EmpireHelen O'HaraApr 30, 2012
"The Notebook" may have had us blubbing but since then Nicholas Sparks adaptions have offered thin pickings for cinemagoers. For all Efron's boyish charms, this one could be the most ordinary of the lot. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 20, 2012
As with its gooey, smoochy predecessors, The Lucky One is, beneath it all, a fairy-tale romance, just one with modern trappings. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanApr 20, 2012
The biggest problem, however, comes down to chemistry. If the leads have it, a Sparks romance will work. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 19, 2012
Depending on how you feel about Zac Efron, he is either a sensitive hunk or an inexpressive hunk, but definitely a hunk. Unable as I am to locate any feelings about him, I see Mr. Efron as a hunk with a problem delivering sustained dialogue in units of more than one or two sentences. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghApr 19, 2012
It's all just empty calories and little more than an excuse to watch Zac Efron play with puppies. It's nice, but for anyone who's too mature for Tiger Beat, it's not enough. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondApr 19, 2012
The emotions are flat, predictable and forced when they ought to be romantic. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovApr 18, 2012
The chickiest flick you're likely to see this season. Depending on your taste in romantic fare, you'll either find it toe-curlingly dreamy or ploddingly predictable. Read full review
40
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 17, 2012
When a novel gives you soapsuds and washboard abs to work with, what other choice does a director have but to provide the most aesthetically pleasing actors, scenery and sets to disguise the thinness of the underlying material. Read full review
40
Time OutDavid FearApr 17, 2012
Question: What's the only thing worse than doing an unfaithful film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel? Answer: Doing a completely faithful one. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenApr 19, 2012
Another Nicholas Sparks novel, another cinematic brush with insulin shock. Read full review
38
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 19, 2012
Director Scott Hicks lavishes good taste and sunsets on a story that - devoid of genuine tension, conflict or combustible chemistry between its two stars - just prettily sits there. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisApr 19, 2012
Seeing her (Schilling) and Efron fumble at each other is like watching a stick of butter and a bag of flour not turn into a cake. Read full review
30
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 19, 2012
If realism is what you're after, you'll do better at "The Three Stooges." The Lucky One is where you will find death, redemption and kisses in the rain. Read full review
30
Village VoiceChuck WilsonApr 17, 2012
No amount of neck nuzzling or back arching can make us believe there's real heat rising between these two. Onscreen chemistry between actors is a mysterious thing - 100 years into cinema, it remains the one story element that Hollywood can't fake. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyApr 17, 2012
Embalming the simple and simplistic yarn in an amber glow that is all but suffocating and banishing from it any traces of humor and spontaneity, director Scott Hicks serves up this treacly tale with absolutely no trace of self-consciousness about the material's cliches or simple-mindedness. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliApr 20, 2012
Supposedly he's suffered, supposedly there are demons lurking within, but guess what: This is a movie. If we can't see it, it's not there. Read full review
25
New York PostSara StewartApr 20, 2012
I'm beginning to think writer Nicholas Sparks isn't one person at all, but a roomful of ladies doing Harlequin-romance Mad Libs. Occasionally they'll hit a winning combination, as in the Sparks novel "The Notebook." More often, you get eye-rollers like "The Lucky One." Read full review
25
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 19, 2012
Is it the worst of the seven screen Sparks so far? Nope. My vote still goes to 2009's "The Last Song" with Miley Cyrus mothering those unhatched turtle eggs. But it's still pretty damn insufferable. Read full review
25
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 18, 2012
Move along, guys. Nothing to see in The Lucky One, unless you're in the doghouse at home and need to make nice. Read full review
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