Read the book, it's better.

Rating: 4/10 (28 August 2005)

This movie basically took a beautiful novel, crumpled it up, spat on it, threw it in the waste basket, and hired a cheerleader to rewrite it. I watched the movie out of curiosity, and read the book later, and was personally disgusted by how horribly they changed what could've been great scenes in this movie. For example, the beautiful Christmas play that Rev. Sullivan wrote was replaced by a New York speakeasy-ish play and song opportunity for the ever popular Mandy Moore. Leukemia victims do not look that healthy either. And of course Landon's parents are separated, they couldn't do anything original with a movie and keep the parents together, noooooooo. But I do applaud them for keeping the boy's best friend as understanding as he was in the book.
Like I said, read the book. Save yourself the agony of witnessing a beautiful work of literature suffer.