Easy to follow, simple to enjoy, and unambitious, “The Longest Ride” is conventional with a twist: two stories instead of one. The latest Nicholas Sparks novel-turned-movie, is a lightly wrapped, commercially popular gift: an enjoyable romance. The story is packaged, wrapped nicely and tied with a neat little bow, and shipped directly to the viewers’ hearts, as is Sparks’s way.

Professional bull-rider Luke (Scott Eastwood), oozes country charm and is looking to make a comeback after a serious injury while Sophia (Britt Robertson) is a soon-to-be college graduate preparing for a prestigious internship at an art gallery in New York. They meet when Sophia rescues Luke’s cowboy hat from a trampled-on-the-dirt-floor demise at his bull-riding competition, which Sophia is forced by her friends to attend. Although she was reluctant to start a relationship, she relented and said ‘yes’ to a date.

After their first date, they encounter a crashed car and rescue the old man inside, Ira (Alan Alda), as well as the wicker box he insists they must save. Sophia grows close to Ira as she visits him, and upon her discovery of the contents of the box – old letters addressed to his late wife Ruth – she reads them aloud to him. As Ruth and Ira’s story is revisited, Luke and Sophia’s is just beginning to unfold.

Of course, no Nicholas Sparks work is complete without letters to drive a plot along. This is just what Ira’s letters do, interweaving Ira and Ruth’s story with that of Luke and Sophia. As Sophia reads the letters aloud, the story shifts to another time, first the 1940s, then on to the 1950s and 1960s with each new letter. It is in this time that the story of a younger Ira (Jack Huston) and his late wife Ruth (Oona Chaplin) is told.

The two couples follow a similar pace, as they learn that love does not come without sacrifice. They easily fall in love and then fall challenges along similar points in the movie, but the story is prevented from being redundant as their challenges are so dissimilar because of the differing eras.

However, the issues Ira and Ruth deal with are much more resonating. Chaplin and Huston have a strong connection skillfully relate the audience to the hardships Ruth and Ira face, including separation during World War II and the struggles of infertility in the time of the postwar baby boom. They are more deeply connected and their story more deeply affecting.

While Ira and Ruth deal with heavy outside forces, Sophia and Luke face problems created among themselves- conflicting hopes for the future, where each has a choice to make. Robertson and Eastwood portray a couple of a lighter mode and with a lessened severity of subject.

“The Longest Ride” is a romantic’s movie. It is not the best of the Nicholas Sparks franchise, but it is engaging and entertaining and fits in as one of higher rank. It delivers just what one would want out of it, a movie filled with romance and drama and equal parts country and historical to taste.

Rating: 3 out of 4 cowboy hats