The other day I watched this movie with Zac Efron in it where he’s a Marine and he finds this woman’s photo while in combat and it somehow acts as a good luck charm, so he decides to find the woman once he’s back in the States and ends up getting a job in her Granny’s veterinary office in Louisiana. She’s of course this beautiful divorced mom of a precocious little boy with a drunk, spoiled, emotionally abusive ex husband/cop who lingers  like a disease, makes her life hard, and gives the ex Marine a bunch of grief.

No matter! The ex Marine and the single mom fall madly in love anyway and then there’s that formulaic romance novel/movie moment where everything is almost ruined by the fact that she finds out he came to the town specifically to find her (how COULD you?!) , using the photo that belonged to her brother who’s MIA and is probably dead. (why didn’t you TELL me?!?)

The ex husband/cop comes by the house (how does a single mom working in a veterinarians office afford a house????) to gloat and threaten to take their son away from her when the boy overhears and runs away during a storm. Drunk dad runs after his son to a rickety bridge over the river that leads to the boy’s tree house. The bridge breaks and drunk dad jumps into the river to save him, only to have the tree house fall on him once the boy is safely in the arms of the sexy ex Marine (Efron). Dead, drunk dad is washed down the river wearing a busted-ass tree house, and the attractive and happy couple lives happily every after to raise the boy, never having to deal with his drunken bullshit ever again. 

(-_-) <fiction)