Finally! A teen film that portrays virtue with neither ridicule nor lectures.

Rating: Null/10 (11 March 2002)

Finally! A teen film that portrays virtue with neither ridicule nor lectures.
"A Walk to Remember" opens with in-your-face teen rebellion. The "in-crowd" at Beaufort High sets up a wannabe for a prank that goes too far. The principal punishes the protagonist by forcing him to interact with "people different from himself." And so Landon Carter (Shane West) crosses paths with Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), a plain Jane Bible-carrying astronomy geek whom Landon has known and ignored since kindergarten.
What follows is a love story with predictable milestones, innocent teenage romance, and devices to close the loose ends. What makes this film special, though, is the way it develops the characters. Landon is portrayed as an angry son who doesn't want to forgive his father for leaving his mother. Jamie has a seductive inner peace that Landon can't resist. The trailer use Landon's question, "Don't you care what people think about you?" and Jamie's answer: "No," to set her up as a rebel against rebellion. But she also sees something good in him despite her first instincts (and her father), which tell her he's nothing but trouble.
Reverend Sullivan (Peter Coyote) could have been less aloof, but the screenplay doesn't give him much to work with. He has to raise his daughter alone after his wife dies. He does the best he knows how, trying to balance the transfer of his values with the acceptance that he has to let his daughter grow up to become her own person.
It's typical for Hollywood films to ridicule anyone who doesn't break the rules, and films praised by the Christian community often suffer from proselytizing that turns off secular audiences. This film doesn't pander to either side. Jamie, by being an old-fashioned symbol for virtue, is the hero of the film, and yet the Christian overtones are muted.
The tone of the mainstream critics of this film is merciless, which is another indication that this film is rebellious in exactly the way it sets out to be. It's a sweet story with a bittersweet ending, and grace is plentiful. That's too much for cynical nihilists to tolerate. But read the negative reviews for yourself. The criticisms sound empty and shallow, just like Landon's in-crowd friends who fail to ridicule him into abandoning his relationship with Jamie.