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MOVIE REVIEW
Rose Pacatte, FSP
Director, Pauline Center for Media Studies
Jamaica Plain
A WALK TO REMEMBER
Release date: January 25, 2002
Warner Brothers
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A WALK TO REMEMBER stars the pop singer Mandy Moore
as Jamie Sullivan and TV ‘s "Once and Again" Shane
West plays Landon Carter in this new coming-of-age story based on
the Nicholas Sparks novel to be released on January 25th. Both actors
are very easy on the eyes. Daryl Hannah plays his Mom (with the
worst hair since Russell Crowe at last year's Oscars)
and Peter Coyote is Jamie's dad, the Reverend Sullivan.
As I watched the film all I could think of was that
this is a purified version of the television series "Dawson's
Creek" meeting "Rebel Without A Cause." My instincts were right:
the movie was filmed in or around Wilmington, North Carolina, just
like Dawson's Creek and tried to be very "hip". It is
also a very "pure" movie that starts out with an alienated adolescent
rebel involved in a very mean and dangerous prank. He is transformed
by the pure love of a pure young woman.
Pure can be good and pure can be less than good,
depending on what you are looking for.
If you want to take your family to a PG film that
is a sweet romance with a pretty good sound track (I really liked
the music), where the transformation of the main character is complete
and explicit and without a shade of moral ambiguity, then this
is a film for you. We can support it as an example of Hollywood
trying to give concerned and/or Christian parents what they asking
for. Like OCTOBER SKY and PAY IT FORWARD, A WALK TO REMEMBER is
a film that the Hollywood nay-sayers need to get out and go
see if they really want these kinds of movies to be made.
If content analysis is important to you over the
story, then I think there's only one "bad" word in the whole thing.
There is some violence but there are consequences for the characters.
I don't recall if there's any alcohol or smoking, but if there is
you can be assured that there is not the remotest chance that this
kind of behavior is condoned. The film features some very chaste
kisses and no sex.
Regarding the story, there are a couple of things
to be remembered. It's based on a Nicholas Sparks novel so somebody
has to die. Tears are a part of the recipe, and the film does work
on this level. You will be moved and you will get blurry-eyed. The
other important thing to remember is that the novel was set in the
1950s but the film has been moved to a contemporary setting. That's
fine as far as it goes, but they forgot to update Jamie's (Mandy
Moore) wardrobe, especially her sweater. This sweater is never fully
explained and it defines her external character and to a certain
extent her inner self as well. The film's artistic credibility rises
and falls with this sweater, despite the rather lovely cinematography
that we don't see enough of.
For a young adolescent audience this is a film with
things to talk about. Single-parent families (compare Landon’s
relationship with his father and Jamie’s with hers), growing-up,
consequences for actions, being more concerned about others than
self, there's more to life than sex, don’t judge a person
by what they look like, and you can survive a small town upbringing.
Religion is not caricatured in the film, though
they didn't get the details right: the religious statue of
the ‘Ecce homo’ in a Protestant home in the south is
clearly incongruous. When Landon jumps at the site of the statue,
we do too, because it doesn’t fit. Some viewers may not take
the earnest religiosity in the film seriously, however, and this
may lead to caricature. And that sweater has more to do with religion
that you might think.
There are no teen romantic movies out there that
seem to have been made for Sunday school but it seems that this
one fits the bill. Will people pay money to go to Sunday school?
Ah, this is the question!
A WALK TO REMEMBER is no TITANIC. But it is what
it says it is: a sweet teen romance - with everything people complain
about in movies removed. It's time for the "critical" audience
to put its money where its mouth is. Warner Brothers has taken two
major risks recently with PAY IT FORWARD and now with A WALK TO
REMEMBER. They are trying to give the *concerned* audience what
it wants and Warner Bros. is to be commended for doing this.
I feel uneasy for Warner Brothers, however, because
if this doesn't make the box office they are hoping for, I don't
want them to quit trying. If indeed they are attempting to
make films for the concerned/Christian audience, A WALK TO REMEMBER
may not be Hollywood enough, especially on the level of the script. Concerned/Christian
audiences want the best of both worlds: a great story and the
best Hollywood can offer for the rest of it. The
lack of both dramatic depth and complexity of character development
in A WALK TO REMEMBER may work against both the concerned/Christian
and a larger audience acceptance.
Then we can talk about the question if all books
should be made into films. Not all best-selling novels carry over
well to the screen.
Warner Bros. seems to want to move beyond a kind
of Christian-family media production that means it has to be flat
and boring to be acceptable. But it's not easy to try to be mainstream
and attract the *concerned* and/or Christian audience at the same
time. It's a matter of blending the best ingredients of movie making
and the challenge of telling the story with great creativity. Our
human and spiritual gestalt needs to be dramatically engaged so
that a movie made for concerned and/or Christian audiences can really
take off and fly free.
Should you go see A WALK TO REMEMBER? Sure.
Will you be inspired? Probably.
Is it a great movie? Well, no it isn't.
But the next one might be!
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