NipPierce Wow, this is a REALLY bad movie!

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Izzy Adkins The movie is surprisingly subdued in its pacing, its characterizations, and its go-for-broke sensibilities.

hughman55 There, I said it. I'm sorry - and I HAVE to say it because I do not love this film, and I mean it. I saw Love Story when it first came out in 1970. I was 14 and I thought it was crap then. Foolishly I attempted a rewatch wondering if my youthful impressions were too harsh. They weren't. In fact, they weren't harsh enough. Thanks to IMDb I can now see that this film was singularly responsible for the four worst Academy Award nominations ever. They make the nominations of Mikail Baryshnikov and Leslie Brown for The Turning Point look serious. At least those two could dance. I would seriously like to know how someone with the talent deficit of Ali McGraw gets into any film, let alone one from a major Hollywood studio, and gets to star in it, is terrible, and then gets nominated for an Academy Award. Which usually means something. Doesn't it?

bkoganbing At an time when people were tuning in, turning on, and dropping out and experimenting with all kinds free love and sex inspired by Woodstock, Love Story which never should have gotten an audience in that generation became the romantic film of the 70s. It still moves people in many ways. Since Erich Segal was a few years ahead of me in graduating from Midwood High School in Brooklyn you can imagine how incredibly popular the story was where I hail from. Maybe people could not identify with rich preppy kid Oliver Barrett IV but there were certainly a lot of folks who identified with scholarship kid from Providence.Who meet at Harvard and I guess opposites do attract because it really is love at first sight for Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw. Both created in Love Story the iconic parts they were identified with. Both spent their lives trying to be in something half as good.Love Story brought home one Oscar for musical scoring. The song Where Do I Begin one of the great romantic ballads of the latter half of the 20th century didn't rate a nomination. But the picture itself, Ryan O'Neal, Ali McGraw, and John Marley who played McGraw's working class father all got Oscar nods. Everyone likes a Cinderella story and this is one with a twist, the poor girl who lands a rich husband and didn't trap him to do it. O'Neal and McGraw are still iconic characters. Can you see a remake today with Ryan Gosling and Jessica Biel in the leads? I sure can, I'm surprised no one has done it.Until they do, this is as good as romance gets.

qormi I remember when this movie came out when I was in high school in 1970. It was wildly popular. The theme from Love Story played on the radio 24/7. Author Eric Seagal appeared on all TV talk shows all the time, as did Ryan O'Neil and Ally McGraw. Every teenage girl in America copied Ally McGraw's hairdo:long, straight, and parted in the middle. Some blonde girls even dyed their hair brown. Teenage boys carried around the Love Story paperback in school and got all the chicks because they thought he was sensitive. But the truth is, this was an awful movie. The acting was bad and so was the script. Scene after scene was so melodramatic...poor Oliver working in a Christmas tree lot...oh, the indignity! Big deal..like a strong 24 year old man can't carry a Christmas tree to a lady's car? And when the doctor broke the news to Oliver...so unintentionally funny...she has no symptoms at all and he announces she will die soon because they took three blood tests and found...what? Doctors don't announce a patient will die unless all extended treatment is exhausted. He didn't even begin treatment or tell Oliver what was killing her. Later on, they mentioned white blood cells and a lack of platelets, but even a veterinarian would treat your dog before giving up on it. Then, she seemed her usual bright eyed and bushy tailed self n her deathbed before she just croaked. Even if she had lived, I don't see how this marriage could have survived more than a few years.Oliver was passive, and Jenny was aggressive, rude, and teased him constantly while saying "goddamn" to punctuate everything. Best comedy of 1970.

Prismark10 This was a popular novel back in the day and the film was a blockbuster that propelled Ryan O Neal and Ali McGraw to stardom.It is a simple tale of two people who meet, fall in love, get married and then one of them becomes ill.Oliver is a rich kid who comes from a family of wealth and privilege. He has a distant relationship with his parents and its clear that his father played by the great Ray Milland disapproves of his girlfriend.Jennifer is working class, plain talking and with a sharp wit. Oliver gets a job as a lawyer once he decides to distant himself from his family.The film is actually rather hokey. Audiences rather lapped this film up but you have a film that does not state what illness Jennifer has, even the doctors do not tell her but tell her husband what is wrong with her.Its an interesting film of its time, nice music, a few stars making their early screen appearances but nothing much more except a famous line that has now part of everyday language: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."