Chloe Grace Moretz is the heart of this movie and thank goodness she's gifted, because in movie form at least, there isn't a lot to the story. The well-loved book is the story of a teenager on the verge of womanhood who is put into a coma by a car accident that takes the rest of her immediate family and explores her internal turmoil of whether to "stay" or go. I haven't read the book, so I can only imagine what's missing, but the movie does manage to stand on its own. The central unanswered questions in the movie are presumably the same ones that interested readers of the original novel: What would you do if you got a choice like that? What would it be like to stay without your family? What would it be like if you "went"?
Unfortunately, the film essentially turns out to be just a love story (The sequel, "Where She Went" looks to be even more so), but her male counterpart is a worthy actor as well. Told mostly in flashbacks, the parts of the story about their developing relationship are perhaps the least compelling, but the exploration of relationships in general make up for it (although in an effort to make her parents seem too perfect to lose to death, they are made a bit cartoony in contrast). There is definitely enough there to make you cry at the appropriate moment. Stacy Keach as her grandfather has a small Oscar-worthy speech and it's refreshing to see Moretz play a self-conscious character, since most of her breakout performances have been powerful and self-possessed (Hugo, Kick-Ass).
I won't avoid the inevitable comparison to the recent young adult novel turned movie, "The Fault in Our Stars", but I will just say that Fault was simply better overall. A better comparison might be to the "non-fiction" book turned movie called "Heaven is For Real", because the only thing about "If I Stay" that keeps coming back to my mind is the questions about comas, death and the after-life, the rest of the movie is basically forgettable.
3 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment