A Walk to Remember

Year: 2002
Genre: Romantic Drama
Directed: Adam Shankman
Stars: Mandy Moore, Shane West, Peter Coyote, Daryl Hannah, Lauren German, Al Thompson, Clayne Crawford, Paz de la Huerta, Jonathan Parks Jordan
Production: Warner Bros.

A word to the wise; if you're going to make an emotionally manipulative film you should probably make the story, or at the very least the actors convincing. A Walk to Remember concerns itself with the uncompromising love of two teenagers Landon (West) and Jamie (Moore). Because at that age all love was uncompromising. Landon, a preppy jock who hangs with the popular crowd gets in trouble with the law and as punishment has to join the drama club...cause that happens. There he struggles but is helped by the bland and boring Jamie who Landon and his friends used to make fun of. She confides in him and tells him she has a list of things she wants to do in life. From there blossoms a romance to the bereavement of Jamie's minister father (Coyote).

No I really don't approve of your choices

The book written by Nicholas Sparks is set the story in the 50's but the film version tries to transplant the story into the 2000s. What results is a film whose values and aw-shucks-ness is dated upon arrival. The director and writer seem to have never set foot in a high school and as a result feel the need to populate the screen with as many pretty looking 20-year-olds as they possibly can. The ensemble is complete with Mandy Moore's unconvincing frumpyness, "popular" kids who have nothing better to do than belittle others, and a token black guy (Thompson) who calls everyone "bro."

Hey bro, how you doin' bro? What's going on bro?

Shane West can't act his way out of a paper bag and the eventual story resolution is just outlandish and silly. I wish everyone looked like Mandy Moore when (spoiler alert) diagnosed with leukemia. Shouldn't she be, I don't know, losing hair, losing weight, getting pale, throwing up etc.? It's one thing to embrace a socially conservative viewpoint like this film does, but its another thing entirely to gloss over or ignore certain realities. You seriously want the audience to believe pretty boy Landon rarely saw Jamie in a sexual light? Female audience members certainly saw Landon that way thus one of the few reasons this film has ever been popular.

Had this unconscionably bland movie been forgotten as it should have been, I may have been more forgiving in my judgment of it. But with a perplexing rating of 7.1 and an enthusiastic following, I simply had to knock it down a peg or two.

Final Grade: F