Chandler’s Trailers: “Love Story” (1970)

     “Love Story” is a tearjerker of a romantic film that intends to be nothing less or more than a tearjerker romantic film (even the title is more than a little generic, and entirely characteristic of the film’s formulaic leanings), to the point that the deadly fate in store for the female half of the featured couple is revealed in the opening moments, so as to not waste a moment in the audience exercising anticipatory squeezings of the tear ducts. The early announcement that the girl in question was “twenty-five, beautiful and loved me” is all well and good as an epiteph, yet the introduction smacks of callously manipulative chicanery, as we are asked to share in the mourning for a character we have yet to meet. When we finally meet Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) and Jennifer Cavalleri (Ali MacGraw), the reasons for the opening salvo of tragic exhaltation expressed in a vacuum is made eminently clear as the pair is a match made in someone’s cynical idea of heaven: both are snobby, rude, obnoxious and satisfied with their own superiority, usually expressed in a playfully argumentative banter that is meant to express charm, but only make one long for the good old days of genuine wit and charm (not to mention a magical brand of affection) expressed by the likes of William Powell and Myrna Loy. 

To read the complete review, click the following link to:  https://chandlerswainreviews.wordpress.com/chandlers-trailers-short-bits-for-emerging-cinephiles-amd-a-better-america/