MODEL student Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) has sacrificed personal relationships to study hard and fulfil the dreams of her parents, Hugh (Bruce Greenwood) and Ann (Joely Richardson).

Her isolation is exacerbated by the death of older brother Chris (Patrick Johnson), who was the golden child of the clan. At the behest of her surviving brother Keith (Rhys Wakefield), Jade embraces life and falls head over heels for reformed bad boy, David Elliot (Alex Pettyfer), whois a valet at her country club.

Consumed with love, Jade foregoes an internship before medical school to spend the summer with David.

Hugh is enraged and when he learns about skeletons in the young paramour's closet, the patriarch vows to protect Jade using any means necessary.

Loosely based on Franco Zeffirelli's iconic 1981 film starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt, Endless Love is a clumsy ode to affairs of the teenage heart.

Shana Feste's film piles on the cliches and contrivances like a club sandwich, stacking poorly sketched characters atop stilted dialogue and woeful performances.

The result is unwieldy and difficult to swallow. The faltering script, cowritten by Joshua Safran, is a lacklustre imitation of the gooey romances peddled by Nicholas Sparks.

Pettyfer's brooding beau is simply too good to be true, while Wilde faces the difficult task of fashioning a likeable heroine in the absence of credible dialogue.

Greenwood is reduced to the snarling two-dimensional villain, threatening David's car mechanic father (Robert Patrick) with a restraining order because “I've lost one child. I'm not losing another one - not to your low-life son!”

DAMON SMITH