Here is a film based unmistakably on a novel by the great rom-dram maestro Nicholas Sparks. It has the steroidal-sucrose flavour of a standard-issue Sparks story about lovers wrenched apart by fate and flung together by destiny – usually hinging on some super-secret handwritten letters. It’s the sort of film where you’re supposed to check your corrosive cynicism at the door. As it happens, there were no cloakroom facilities at the cinema I saw it, so I brought mine into the auditorium with me, and it was only this that allowed me to appreciate the calculated narrative ploys and manipulations. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan play two former high-school sweethearts who meet up again. Marsden’s character is called Dawson and, in a gender reversal, he actually used to climb in through his girlfriend’s bedroom window! Yikes! As teenagers in flashback, they are played by different actors. Marsden’s looks so bafflingly unlike him I was certain the plot twist would involve facial reconstructive surgery. His abusive dad, however, looks so much like Will Ferrell I was sure the actual Will Ferrell would turn up later to get a savage retributive beating. The sugar content of this film is so horrendously high, it could be available on the NHS for hypoglycaemia.