Don’t be Scared, Love Story is a Thinking Man’s Chick Flick

Perhaps the original chick flick, Love Story is a thinking man’s chick flick.  Don’t be scared, there is plenty here to like even if you are a guy.

This 1970 movie, and the book, created a major sensation in the early seventies.

The real star of this movie is the script by Erich Segal, who also wrote the novel.  Throughout the movie the dialogue is spot-on.  Especially that of Jenny.  The first 15 minutes delivers some real spice go with the sugar that is Jenny.  Oliver is smitten and he gives it back gamely, though in somewhat of a more restrained manner befitting his reserved background.

There are quite a few things a guy can latch onto in this film.  Ryan O’Neal’s Oliver is a man’s man.  We see him bloodied in a hockey game at the beginning of the film.  He plays for Harvard.  His father went there, too, and rowed in the 1928 Olympics.  His father is a tough, wealthy, attorney who who most assuredly wears silk stockings.  He comes to see Oliver and Harvard play hockey against Cornell, and drives away in an E-Type Jaguar.  In the snow.  Now that is sporting.

Someone connected to this film had a thing for cars because that is not the only treat.  Early in the film, we see a sixties Ferrari Formula One car on a poster in a Harvard dorm room, it looks like John Surtees is driving.  Throughout the film, Oliver drives a MG TC around Boston with the top down.  In the winter.  Again, very sporting.  The wind-blown, but uncomplaining, ever-witty Jenny is his left-hand woman since the MG is, of course, right-hand drive.  Later in the film, even though Oliver and Jenny are living in a run-down section of Boston as they scrape by in school and work, there is a mint Shelby Mustang parked right outside.  Just some guy-type things I happened to notice in this chick flick.  Additionally, there are some good scenes of Harvard’s football stadium.

So, maybe, this is enough to intrigue some guys about this film.  If not, there is always Jenny.  Ali MacGraw did a spectacular job in this movie.  There is some great back and forth between Oliver and Jenny about her looks and, as usual, she just about gets the best of him.  Her style ranges from monumental nerd with huge glasses to quite attractive and desirable.  Yes, there is something about Jenny.

And O’Neal did a great job, too.  One rather subtle thing is captured rather well in this movie.  Oliver and Jenny confront a number of very difficult and real issues in their young lives.  Some are of their own making and some are not.  Some they handle well and some they do not.  They are still very young and, as such, sometimes they are still very immature.  Each of them lapsing into these moments is some of the best acting in the movie.  Their story has much more than its share of pain and sadness, but it can also be cringe-worthy at times.  It is something that adds to the movie in a very real way, both part of the charm and of the tragedy.

Part immature male fantasy and part cloying chick flick, Jenny goes to the grave (at this point can this possibly be a spoiler?) with parting shots like, “I want you to be merry for me, you big hockey jock.”  Mostly perfect while teetering dangerously on the edge of terminal maudlin melodrama, the script is the star of this show.  It could all be excused as overwrought tragedy.  He, she, and they are dying, both literally and figuratively.  But, as the most famous line from the film states, apologies are for the loveless, so don’t be sorry.  Or something like that.

Here’s something I did get right.  Love Story is a chick flick that a real man can get behind.  And that’s not scary.