Screened Out – If I Stay

[two-star-rating]Cloë Grace Moretz, Jamie Blackley, Mirella Enos, Joshua Leonard, Stacey Keach[/two-star-rating]

If I Stay is existential treacle aimed at 14-year-olds. In that sense, it’s a solid, average film. When compared to other films that dare to try something new, If I Stay is rudimentary and manipulative.

It’s perfectly fine to get emotionally wrapped up in such stuff, to smile at the many cute lines (mostly from Gayle Foreman’s best-selling book) and to sniffle at the melodrama. That’s the greatness of film, how it can make us feel.

However, I keep thinking that there are so many more chances this movie could’ve taken, so many exciting options left for dead.

Moretz is a high school prodigy of the cello, a daughter of cool rock-n-roll parents (Leonard and Enos). Our heroine accidentally falls for Blackley, a young “rocker” (a term uncomfortably used throughout the film). Their rock-meets-classical relationship is rocky. Then Moretz and her family suffer a terrible car accident, and she spends the rest of the film in a coma, deciding if she should stay or if she should go. (Cue The Clash tune.)

The director here is R.J. Cutler, who’s better known for brilliant documentaries (A Perfect Candidate and The September Issue – both of which I encourage you to see). This, his first foray into narrative film, is not so successful.

IF I STAY is really a romance for teenagers, nothing more.
IF I STAY is really a romance for teenagers, nothing more.

Shauna Cross wrote the script; she’s only had two other films. She created the cute and funny roller derby flick Whip It. She also adapted the abysmal What to Expect When You’re Expecting. In that latter case and in If I Stay, she didn’t drive a unique vision. She relies too much on narrative and over-written scenes.

I can appreciate the commitment to bare bones filming, where no special effects get in the way. However, Moretz is a better young actress than this; too much here feels like she was under-rehearsed. When she has a good scene – and there are a few – it just shows up the emptier ones. Many times, she’s left in the middle of hospital hallways to just emote and cry and rock back and forth.

The other characters are really only stereotypes.

Yet, it could’ve worked better. Scenes go on a lot longer than they need to, crying to be cut off. Since Moretz is walking between life and death, much more artistic camera and editing techniques – interesting cutaways and shifts of focus – could’ve been utilized. The detailed narration is unnecessary; it hems in the filmmakers. There is no good reason this story is almost two hours long.

[rating-key]

Since If I Stay is also about music, the tunes could’ve also been more creatively used throughout. Classical could’ve melded and blended into rock and vice versa. Instead, we get the painfully typical movie montage underscored by a recent stab at Top Ten or a modern cover of a classic. It’s tragic how very few chances were taken.

Foreman’s book provides a lot of cute, funny lines. And I think teenagers deserve a good tearjerker like this. Unfortunately, Cutler, Cross, and the producers refuse to make any life-or-death choices, to throw caution into the wind, and to let the film live.

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