Starring Michelle Monaghan, James Marsden, Gerald McRaney, Luke Bracey, Liana Liberato, Sean Bridgers; directed by Michael Hoffman; 113 minutes; PG-13 for sexuality, violence, some drug content and brief strong language

For an hour or so, Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden gamely swim against the current, fighting the torpid tide of tripe that romance novelist Nicholas Sparks sends their way in his latest.

It’s sad to watch them strain and struggle and then give up as the lachrymose “The Best of Me” drowns them in a sea of saccharine.

It’s yet another doomed, last-chance love story set in the coastal South, star-crossed lovers “destined” to be together but kept apart by tragedy. Dawson (Marsden) once loved Amanda (Monaghan). They were high school sweethearts – the pushy, spunky rich girl, the book-smart “white trash” bayou rat. But circumstances broke them apart, and when we meet him he’s on an oil rig in the Gulf, a rig that has a blowout that hurls him into the sea. When he wakes up, he’s summoned to the reading of a will. She’s been summoned, too. Can love’s flame rekindle?

“The Best of Me” is just Sparks’ greatest hits, starting with “The Notebook,” a touch of “Dear John,” and running through every “not good enough for my daughter,” every tragic death, broken memory or noble sacrifice. Which is why “The Best of Me” plays like the worst of Nicholas Sparks.

roger moore, mcclatchy newspapers

James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan star in Relativity Media’s THE BEST OF ME.

Gemma LaMana