This Zac Efron Tearjerker Just Cracked Netflix’s Top 10

I’d expect nothing less from a Nicolas Sparks film

It’s no secret that Netflix’s Top 10 can look completely different from one day to the next. With new movies and TV shows dropping all the time, there’s always something fresh to watch. But every so often, an older title finds its way back into the spotlight. The latest throwback to make the list is currently sitting at number six, and it’s a Zac Efron tearjerker you might remember: The Lucky One.

If you need a refresher, the 2012 film is based on Nicholas Sparks’s 2008 novel of the same name. It follows U.S. Marine Logan Thibault (Efron), who keeps a photograph of a smiling woman as a lucky charm during his tours in Iraq. After returning home and struggling with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, he travels to Louisiana with his German Shepherd, Zeus, to find her.

He eventually meets Beth Green (Taylor Schilling), a single mom who runs a dog kennel with her grandmother, Ellie (Blythe Danner). Logan takes a job at the kennel and grows close to Beth and her young son, Ben, but their budding romance hits a few bumps thanks to Beth’s abusive ex-husband, Deputy Sheriff Keith Clayton.

Critics weren’t exactly swooning over the romantic drama. It currently holds a 20 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences, however, have been a little more generous, giving it a 67 percent score on the site. Over on Letterboxd, viewers have rated it 2.7 out of 5 stars.

And for some viewers revisiting the film all these years later, it seems to have aged into a nostalgic watch. One Rotten Tomatoes reviewer even called it a nice “refresher” for the genre.

“After 14 years since this movie originally came out, watching it in 2026 is a refresher in the Romantic/Romantic Comedy genre,” one viewer wrote.

And, if there’s one thing viewers seem to agree on, it’s that you’ll want to keep some tissues nearby.

“It was a good movie, mostly cry in some scenes but this movie is really beautiful,” one person shared. Another called it Sparks’s “seventh tear-jerking chick-flick.”

A third reviewer summed it up this way: “Slight tearjerked, slight Lifetime met Halmark original. Def Efronfest.”

The Lucky One is streaming now on Netflix.

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