A Walk To Remember

Movie Title: A Walk To Remember
Official Website (it might still work): A Walk To Remember
Rating (out of 10): 5
Reviewed By: Michael Stevens
Buy the: Video/DVD \| Soundtrack
The Review:

A Walk to Remember promotes singer Mandy Moore (The Princess Diaries) in their advertising, but the film really isn’t about her character. Instead, this Adam Shankman directed film focuses on the Landon Carter character played by Shane West (Dracula 2000). However, what is even odder than this twist of fate is that despite my preconceived notions going into the theater, A Walk to Remember was not horrible and it wasn’t nearly as bad and cheesy as the other two movies I saw on the same weekend.

We begin the film with drunken high school kids daring another kid to jump off some piece of tall equipment into a large pond in order to join their popular group. Of course this kid gets hurt, but the other kids take off from the scene before the police arrive and most escape trouble. However, Landon is caught, but he only gets in trouble for drinking beer at school and is sentenced by the principal to be in the school play, help out the janitors, and tutor junior high students. Predictably, he hates all this, but then runs into miss goodie-two-shoes in Jamie Sullivan (Moore). She is that do-gooder that every high school has, who is involved in all the civic and school issues, whom dresses plainly, and doesn’t care what others think (much like Reese Witherspoon’s character in Election, but without the evil side). The two have gone to school together since elementary school but have never been friends since Landon is part of the cool clique and Jamie wasn’t cool. Predictably the two resist each other and then fall in love in a forbidden romance (forbidden by Landon’s cool friends and by Jamie’s preacher father). Her father (Peter Coyote) doesn’t want Landon around since he thinks he is a bad influence and then later doesn’t want him around because of Jamie’s secret. However, this is not much of a secret or a surprise since only dying people tend to make to do lists for their lives and then try and complete them. Meanwhile, Landon is trying to help Jamie complete items on the list while dealing with his own issues concerning who he thought were his friends and trying to come to terms with his doctor father (Robert C. Treveiler) that left Landon and his mom (Daryl Hannah) years ago.

Briefly, the film is based on a book by the same title from author Nicholas Sparks. Karen Janszen then wrote the screenplay. Others in the film are the token black guy Al Thompson (The Royal Tenenbaums), Lauren German, Clayne Crawford, Matt Lutz, Jonathan Parks Jordan, Paz de la Huerta, and Charles E. Bailey.