Love On A Dark Street

Rating: 8/10 (20 June 2014)

Okay, it's manipulative. On the other hand if you choose to watch a movie that you know revolves around two young kids, both terminally ill, who fall in love, a love that by definition has nowhere to go, and when the lovers in question are teenagers rather than, say, sixty year olds, then you shouldn't be surprised to be manipulated. My feeling on this is I'll sit still for a little manipulation provided it's being done by pros so that it's polished to a high gloss and acted to a high standard. That, in short, is what we have here. I singled out Shailene Woodley as the best thing in The Descendents a couple of years back and here she lights up the screen and though once again she is the best thing on view the support is light years better than she got in The Descendents so that overall Woodley takes the movie but only by a nose from the rest of the cast. It was probably slightly unorthodox to have a leading man (Ansel Eghort) so stunning as to be an amalgam of Tom Cruise, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor etc and cast him opposite an actress like Woodley, who is NOT chocolate box pretty a la Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn etc and make us wait to see that she is Beautiful once she starts to act. For that matter it is inconceivable that a babe magnet like Eghort would be a total singleton. This to one side all the cast are totally believable and we can even forgive the heavy-handed metaphor of a visit to the home of Anne Franck in Amsterdam.Arguably a slick rather than a chick flic but then again why not a Slick chick flic.