Squeaky Clean Does NOT Equal Good!

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2002)

I've been told that 'A Walk to Remember' should be forgiven for its multitude of faults because a)It has a positive Christian message for teens, and b)It's a 'Chick Flick', and, for some reason, that makes leaps of logic somehow acceptable. Personally, both arguments, to me, demean the groups referred to. A good film stands on its own merits; a bad film, and this one is a stinker, should not be rationalized away by saying it's target audience expects less!
'A Walk to Remember' opens with the world's most clean-cut 'gang' of overprivledged kids busting into an abandoned warehouse complex at night (shades of 'Footloose'), then daring a kid as a rite of initiation to dive from a tower into a sinkhole of water (shades of 'Breaking Away'). Conned by the charismatic leader (Shane West), the kid jumps, and is badly injured. Naturally, the police immediately arrive, and West is busted, for staying with the kid. As punishment, he is given probation, community service time...and he has to JOIN the DRAMA CLUB!!! (This is PUNISHMENT for nearing KILLING a kid???) In the Drama Club is school geek and Born-Again Christian Mandy Moore, who you can tell is 'The Good Girl' because she carries a Bible, doesn't wear makeup, and is wardrobe-challenged! From her soulful glances at him, and his arrogant smile in reply, you know that True Love is only a few plot-twists away. It takes Opening Night to provide the catalyst, though...apparently, this club doesn't believe in dress rehearsals, because when she walks onstage, in makeup, and a slinky dress with no underwear (one wonders how her minister father approved of THAT!), and sings to West, as the male lead (yes, despite having no acting ability, or experience, he gets the lead in the play), he sees how hot she is for the first time, and falls for her.
She warns him NOT to fall in love with her (ah, could there be a secret she's not sharing? DUH!), but he follows her around, anyway, even to the cemetery where she stargazes with her telescope at night. (This sets up one of the most brain-dead scenes of the film; he asks to see Pluto, to which she replies that it doesn't rise until two hours before sunrise. "I'll wait", he says...In reality, Pluto is impossible to see in a small telescope...it wasn't even discovered until 1930, in an amazing piece of detective work...and this supposedly brilliant astronomy hobbyist doesn't know this??? As a Born-Again Christian, you KNOW she wasn't lying to get a night alone with West!)
Eventually, Moore collapses, and it is revealed she is dying of cancer (shades of 'Here on Earth'), and, on her deathbed in the hospital, West proposes to her. His estranged doctor father pays to get her Home Care, for her last days...and the next scene, the couple are walking through the woods together, with Moore looking better than ever! (I believe in Love's healing powers, but this is a stretch, even for me!) The couple marry, and share a Summer of Love, before she finally dies (shades of 'Love Story'), and he, redeemed, goes on to ace Medical School (shades of 'Magnificent Obsession').
The acting is uneven, at best; Shane West does a credible job, certainly better than Chris Klein did in the 'Walk' clone, 'Here on Earth'. Peter Coyote, as Moore's minister father, does what he can in a role that seems to have been 'lifted' from John Lithgow's in 'Footloose'. Daryl Hannah, nearly unrecognizable with dark hair, is quite good as West's mother. But the rave reviews Mandy Moore has received as the dying girl seem unjustified; no makeup and stilted line readings do NOT equal a great performance! In order for a film like this to work, you must believe the heroine, and the bittersweet nature of her love. I never got beyond the 'golly, look, Mandy Moore is acting' stage, and her delivery often had me wincing!

There ARE some great tearjerkers out there, both classic and contemporary...'A Walk to Remember' is just NOT one of them!