A diamond in the Rough

Rating: 10/10 (20 January 2003)

I'll start off by saying that I'm 25 years old so I'm a little above the target age group for the movie. Even so, I have found a new favorite movie. I am a sucker for the romance stuff and although there wasn't enough time to fully develope the characters, I thought Mandy Moore and Shane West made up for that in chemistry. They were in tune with each other throughout the movie which made it easy to get totally engulfed in the emotions of the characters they were portraying. The storyline was good also, but it was the leading lady and man that brought this film to life. I had barely paid attention to Mandy Moore because I am not a big fan of the teen singers usually (some of them make me wince). Needless to say I own the sound track to the movie now and she is one of my new favorites. She had the class to do a movie like "A Walk to Remember" instead of portraying the typical "cool" teen in other movies that have no substance and guide our youth in the wrong direction.
I was sitting in front of a group of teenagers (13-14 years old) in the theater and overheard them talking about some pretty vulgar stuff, very disheartening to hear. I walked out of the movie glowing from the fact that those same girls just took in a message of love, kindness, and faith in a genre that usually reinforces drugs, sex, and other very negative, yet influential aspects of characters. Teen years are tough and teens often times believe what they see, real or not. They saw characters they could relate to in Jamie and Landen and the life choices in this movie are the stuff life is really about. In closing, excellent job done by all of the cast especially Mandy and Shane and I loved the movie!