A Surprising Vacation from Typical Teen Tripe

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 2002)

I originally walked into this movie as punishment for taking my girlfriend to see Kung Pow with my friends. I turned the tables on her, however, my enjoying this movie, and with good reason.
I have never read the book, and in either case I have no idea what correlation exists between the title and the story, but I do know this about the movie, it is a good story that is competently acted by the principals. Shane West is good at pouting at authority and even better at showing steely resolve when someone dares to believe in him. Mandy Moore easily sells her role as the quiet but confident church mouse, but I think she cheats by having those big brown eyes. The dialog is not perfect but manages to make its point and move the story forward. Personally I think if dialog is "good enough" you need to go back and make it great, but the story itself, while a bit cliched and contrived, glosses over the holes in the dialog.
The movie starts off rather hard-edged and typical of Varsity Blues-type teen movies, but the opening scene is an antithesis to the rest of the story. It is so disjointed that it almost seems out of place, probably because it was not in the book (I'm told), but it can be dismissed as necessary to get us acquainted with the fact that these teens are going headlong down the path to trouble. Once that's out of the way, we can actually start examining the characters.
West seems angry at everybody, probably because his dad left him and his mom is Daryl Hannah in a bad wig. Add his desire to be cool with his friends, mostly by pretending not to care what people think (a dichotomy that only makes sense if you're cool), and you have a kid only to happy to glare at everybody.
Moore is a preacher's daughter who inexplicably sees West and finds in him an inner strength that no one else sees. The film suggests that it's because nobody else is looking for it, a subtle undertone about the times. It goes without saying that they fall in love, and there is a major tragic plot twist in the final third of the movie that has the whole theater blubbering by end credits.
The dirty little secret of this movie is that the story is not about the couple, but about West and his character's redemption. The undertones of faith and charity scream for a religious message, but for better or worse, there is no actual conversion process in the film. I was personally disappointed by this, as it seems to suggest redemption by proxy, which is both unbiblical and impractical, but in an age where religion is immediately and unfairly linked with prosletyzing, it's a compromise I will have to live with.
Having said this, the final portion of the movie seemed a bit drawn out and misdirected. Time spent languishing over the principals, their tragedy and their resolve (a bit mature and dry-eyed for 18-year-olds), could have been invested in West's interaction with supporting characters. In fact, the supporting cast has been sentenced to the periphery in this film, appearing only now and again to remind us that West and Moore are not the only two people on earth. Perhaps truncating the later scenes and replacing them with longer scenes involving the supporting characters would have fleshed them out more, and as a result, made the principals more three-dimensional as well. A good supporting role does not supplant the main story or give the audience something to do between car chases, it enhances the main story. A bit more of this would have made a really good movie into an outstanding portrait of humanity.
I highly recommend anyone who dares to believe, in God, in themselves, in each other, go and see this film. You will not be disappointed. Self-appointed cinema gurus, watch at your own risk. This is ALMOST a great movie. 8 out of 10.