Don't be taken for The Longest Ride

Every movie educates as it entertains. The Longest Ride (rated PG-13 for some sexuality, partial nudity, and some war and sports action) quietly teaches the unwary student to cede virtue to worldliness.

Sophia (Britt Robertson), an art major at Wake Forest, has a post-graduation job lined up at a swanky Manhattan museum. She meets Luke (Scott Eastwood), a champion bull rider back in the saddle after a yearlong recovery from a serious injury.

Late one evening, Luke and Sophia happen upon a fiery car wreck and pull elderly driver Ira (Alan Alda) to safety. Sophia regularly visits Ira in the hospital, reading aloud to him letters he wrote his sweetheart in the 1940s. This begins the telling of the film’s two intertwining love stories, in which both couples face difficult decisions that threaten their relationships.

Soon after young Ira (Jack Huston) and Ruth (Oona Chaplin) become engaged, Ira goes off to war. Ruth has always wanted a large family, but Ira sustains an injury that renders him unable to have children. When he returns home from the frontlines, the couple’s marriage plans are in doubt.

Sophia is torn between a life in North Carolina with Luke, who might die if he suffers another injury, and a career in New York. Luke seeks to recapture his former glory and, in so doing, earn enough money for his mother to keep the ranch she lives on.

Both romances begin innocently. Ira and Ruth get to know each other at synagogue events. Luke insists on paying for Sophia’s drink—“I’m old school,” he claims—and he arranges a lakeside picnic. When she ribs him, “I saw the way my sorority sisters looked at you,” Luke rebukes her. “Do you think I’m that type of guy?” The first half of the film is a refreshing lesson in old fashioned courtship.

But on their third date, after Sophia falls in the mud outside Luke’s house, she invites him into the shower with her, where they initiate a physical relationship the film repeatedly returns to. And when Ira considers canceling the wedding, Ruth pulls him into bed.

In the end, Sophia and Luke can’t agree on their future plans, but an improbable development simultaneously solves career, injury, and ranch issues. The Longest Ride turns out to be just another class at Hollywood U., where love equals sex and happiness is inevitable.