Project Valentine, Day 27: A Walk to Remember

2/27/2011

The penultimate entry of Project Valentine has arrived.  Penultimate is a good word, with too few opportunities to use it in daily life.  I think I may have made that same observation on the penultimate day of Project Horror, but I don't want to look it up right now.  I need to write this up and post it so I can watch the Oscars on DVR.  See you in hell, musical numbers!  I've got a Fast Forward button!

When I asked my Facebook friends for movie ideas for Project Valentine, I had a whole range of suggestions, but two movies in particular received far more votes than any others.  Tonight's movie is the runner up, A Walk to Remember, starring Shane West and Mandy Moore.

So, a lot of you sure must have liked this movie, huh?  Well, OK.  I... didn't dislike it, exactly.  I'll get to that in a minute.  First, the plot.  Shane West plays Landon Carter, a baaaad boy.  He drives a muscle car!  He has a token black friend!  When he is busted for a prank gone wrong, his principal convinces the authorities not to press charges in exchange for Landon doing community service, including performing in the school play.  Take that, drama geeks who were vying for the lead!  Your passion and commitment don't matter when there's a baaaad boy to be rehabilitated!  Mandy Moore plays Jamie Sullivan, the reverend's daughter.  All of the things that Landon does as his punishment, she does for fun.  She is a good girl.  Have you seen a high school movie before?  OK, then you know that the leads in the play always fall in love.  Always.  (Or at the very least, they have sex, as in the case of Teen Wolf.)  Their relationship faces obstacles along the way - he is embarrassed to let his friends know about her, and her father is very suspicious of him.  As they work through these problems and grow closer, she reveals her secret to him.  SPOILERS FOLLOW.  Jamie has leukemia, and has only a short time to live.  In the time she has left, he helps her to make the dreams on her list come true, including being married in the same chapel her parents were married in.  She helps him heal his relationship with his father and set goals of his own.  And they live happily ever after, for like two or three months.

I see why this movie appeals to people.  It's a romance against the odds, it's got archetypal characters, and an uplifting ending.   Maybe that's what seems strange about this movie to me now that I've watched it as part of Project Valentine.  I've watched 27 movies so far this month, and very, very few of them have unambiguously happy endings.  This one, even with a death, makes its way into happy ending territory.  You know when you give up soda for Lent, and then on Easter you drink a big root beer and it makes you ill because your body has forgotten how to handle it?  My brain has forgotten how to handle a happy ending.  I guess this movie is cinematic comfort food.  You don't expect anything all that original, but it feels good while you're taking it in.  I get it.

Remember in Mike Tyson's Punch Out, how you always knew when to dodge Piston Honda's punches because he telegraphed them with his eyebrows?  This movie was like one big twitching eyebrow.  "Promise not to fall in love with me" = cuz I'm'a die.  "I'm not gonna tell you the first item on my list" = I'm totally gonna tell you the first item on my list later.  "You told me I could spend the time I have the way I want" = there's not much time left.

I am torn.  This is not a movie that I can praise on its objective merits.  And I'm just not that big of a fan of high school romances in general.  I mean, look back at when you were in high school.  I know that the feelings ran very strong, but can you honestly say that you were at your romantic peak?  Thirty-five year-old me has moves that seventeen year-old me never even dreamed of.  But I am also remembering my wife's words that sparked this whole project: "You know, you might end up liking some of them if you give them a chance, instead of being a cynical ass."  And so help me, I did kind of like this one, corny as it may have been.  It helps, too, that Mandy Moore has since done some really fun work like the movie Saved! and on Scrubs.

RATING - Three telescopes out of five
LESSON - This sentiment may be cliched, but I'm choosing to play it straight and just say this: what greater gift do we have in this life than to find somebody to love, and who loves us in return?  When you find that person, love them fully and wholly, because you never know how much time you have.

8 comments:

Terri said...

I'm actually kind of scared to write a comment. I'm not a funny, sarcastic wit (read that as you may) like a lot of your friends. I really enjoyed this review. I haven't read very many of your "projects," but I do plan to go back and check the rest out. I find it hard to believe you had time to watch 27 movies and then write 27 blogs when you have 3 kids and ....well...don't get me started on the whole "when do you have time to ...??? " stuff. All I have to say about that is, "It's not fair."

I think I may have actually seen part of this movie on TV and turned it off. I really don't like corny, predictable love stories. I did enjoy your description of the plot, though. I especially liked the part about how the bad boy got the part in the school play, and how the theater geeks' passion and commitment don't matter when the bad boy has to be rehabilitated, and how she does everything for fun that he has to do for punishment. So true- you former magnet kid, you.

Absolutely loved the whole Mike Tyson paragraph! You are very talented and your right brain is being wasted at the bank!

Danny said...

I've got to do something to remove this fear that people have of commenting! I mean, sure, I'm a supergood blogger and all, but it's just no fun if nobody wants to leave responses. To encourage everybody, I've added a nice new note to the comment form.

As far as where I find the time, I've got a wife who works nights, three kids who are in bed by 8, and a neverending mountain of laundry to fold in front of the TV. Netflix was invented for guys like me!

You know, I hadn't considered it until you pointed it out, but I guess that I was a lot closer to the goody two shoes character than I'd like to admit. I like to think that I've since made up for it in spades.

Thanks for reading and leaving a note!

Will Meekin said...

Who knew, "A Walk to Remember," is as cogent an existential manifesto as anything Kafka ever wrote as evidenced by two of your observations above:

Don't fall in love with me, cuz I'ma die.
And they live happily ever after, for like two or three months.

And then Mandy Moore shoots a stranger. In Reno, just to watch him die.

Phew. The horror.
Wm.

Ali said...

seriously, will. i think you're just stringing big words together and YOU don't even know what they mean. "...is as cogent an existential manifesto as anything Kafka ever wrote as evidenced by two of your observations..." WTF?

but, seriously, i thought danny made this movie seem like it was a pretty clear statement about human existence... kinda like that German writer guy. ;)

Danny said...

Oh my gosh, I just realized something that I wouldn't have realized before watching a month of romance movies. If Ali and Will were not both already married, her picking at his blog comments would be like the PERFECT way for them to meet and fall in love.

Ali said...

AGH! WILL! he's starting to see us all as characters in the movie of his life! RUN... before he envisions the death of our spouses in some bizarre meteor catastrophe or plague.

Anonymous said...

While I wish nothing bad upon anyone, I LOVE the idea of Ali and Will's respective spouses being killed in the same meteor catastrophe even though they live in different states.

This really is a romance movie plot in the making. We could probably write it by committee and get it green lit.

Ooh! One of the spouses shouldn't die but is comatose, making the new affair that much more wrought.

Danny said...

I am writing the voiceover for the trailer even now.

"In a world where calamity rains from the sky (scene of falling meteors), two people (flash cuts to Ali and Will) will overcome the odds and rebuild not only their homes, but their hearts..."

I have an idea for how to handle the comatose spouse, too, but perhaps we should take this to a private forum before somebody starts to steal our work.

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