Love Story

Love means never having to say you're sorry. —Jennifer Cavalleri and later Oliver Barrett

A 1970 feature film about a rich college student named Oliver who falls in love with a working-class student named Jenny. Considered a classic romance film as well as the mother of all Tear Jerkers. Based on the novel of the same name by Erich Segal.

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Contains examples of:

• 555: When Jenny goes to call Oliver's parents, he gives her a real-sounding phone number, followed by her dialing 555-5555.
• Award Bait Song: "Love Story", especially the Andy Williams version.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Taken to such an extreme level it made Roger Ebert coin the term "Ali MacGraw Disease", as in, "movie illness in which the only symptom is that the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches".
• Boy Meets Girl
• Chick Flick
• Downer Ending
• Expository Theme Tune

Where do I begin To tell the story of how great a love can be? The sweet love story that is older than the sea? The simple truth about the love she brings to me? Where do I start?

• Hold Me: Jenny's last request to Oliver before she dies.
• How We Got Here
• Ill Girl: Jenny becomes one halfway through the movie
• Infertility Angst: Subverted. Jenny and Oliver have trouble conceiving, but when Oliver talks to the doctor he reveals that Jenny has leukemia, and any angst over not having a baby evaporates in light of the much worse news.
• Parental Marriage Veto: Oliver's father cuts all ties with his son for choosing to marry below his class, not that Oliver helps matters any. Luckily, he changes his mind at the end when he finds out Jenny is ill and that Oliver needs to pay for her treatment. They make up at the end.
• Slap Slap Kiss: How Jenny and Oliver start out
• Soap Opera Disease
• Spoiler Opening: "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?"
• (Trivia) Write Who You Know: Oliver was based on friends of the author, college roommates Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore. The movie was also Tommy Lee Jones' film debut, as Hank Simpson.