WELCOME TO MY WORLD!!!!!

Not everyone falls for movies that include dramatic, romantic scenes. But when you come across one that grabs your attention, you can’t help but thoroughly analazing what might make it an interesting piece or not. Based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, who also inspired another movie called “Message in a Bottle”, “A Walk to Remember” narrates a story that may well be happening in modern days. If you are looking to go see a movie from which you will get a life lesson out of, then A Walk to Remember is definitely the movie for you.

The story takes place in Beaufort, North Carolina. Landon Carter (played by Shane West who also appeared in movies such as A time for dancing and Get over it) and his friends, all popular high school seniors, play a prank on a kid who gets sent to the hospital as a result. Out of all the group members that were part of the prank, Carter is the one that unfortunately gets caught. As a punishment for his actions, he is forced to do community service. He has to star in a school play in company of the other nerds that make up the drama club. Now that should not really be considered a sentence if Carter gets to be the lead character of the play, except that there is one reason. He is not an actor, he knows absolutely nothing about the drama club and could turn out making a complete fool of himself by starring in the play. In addition, Carter is popular so if he is seen hanging around the “unpopulars”, he could lose his reputation among his other popular friends. And surely he does not want that.

In this same play is Jamie Sullivan an unpopular kid, the daughter of the town’s preacher. The character of Jamie Sullivan is played by Mandy Moore who has also starred in How to deal and Chasing Liberty. Jamie is always teased by the other girls at the school because she is supposedly too religious and not out going. She is considered boyish and annoying because she never wears make-up.

But when Carter gets stuck studying his lines for the play, it’s Jamie that he turns to for help. She is very good at acting and Carter feels that she’s the only who can help him so he can fulfill his community service duties and get them over with once and for all. Jamie agrees to help him out less than one condition: he should not fall in love with her. Careless, Carter accepts. After all, he only dated loud, well-known, gorgeous girls that literally looked like models. No way in hell did he think that he would actually fall for Jamie. But little did he know he finds himself growing stronger feelings for her day by day by an ironic turn of fate. Never would he have thought that someone with such an outstanding personality as the one that Jamie Sullivan possessed would sweep him off of his feet. Carter ceases to hang out with his popular friends and devotes all of his time to Jamie. They eventually fall in love and stay with each other despite the looks and bad tongues that gossip around the school.

But every happy moment has a dark spot to spoil everything. So it turns out that she had her reasons for asking Carter not to fall in love with her after all because Jamie was dying. She was diagnosed with leukemia and had very little time to live.

In this poignant story where I literally stay stuck to the television until the end, the viewer will anticipate with the same impatience how Carter will react to Jamie’s revelation. Will he turn his back on her or will they make things work before she lives this world? From the moment at which Jamie confesses her disease to Carter, you can not help but to wonder what will happen next.

The very first thing that catches the viewer’s attention in this film is the story. The actors play very well their role but, the story is what’s to be considered the most when it comes to analyzing the movie. Directed by Adam Shankman, also director of high-praised movies such as Hairspray, and Bringing down the house, A walk to remember is definitely a must-see for fans of tragic love stories.

      One of the most memorable scenes of the movie is when Jamie and Carter make that first click: when they finally realize that they can no longer hide their feelings behind an imaginary veil. That moment when they make eye contact, directly tells the viewer that something was definitely about to happen. It happens during the big opening of the play. In the plot, Carter’s character meets Jamie’s character and in the course of the play, they get to know each other. At the end, Jamie is supposed to sing him a song and it should have stayed to that. But no one saw what happens next coming! Carter literally leans over to Jamie and shares a kiss so passionate with her that the assistance is left in a state of total astonishment.

            Another part of the movie that catches the viewer’s attention is the scene where Jamie tells Carter all. You can perfectly see the struggle that is going on inside of her before she lets it all out. She starts out with the words: “I’m sick”.

“Well yeah”, answers Carter, “you will get better, you just have to get some medicine that’s it”

“You don’t understand Landon”, she replies in despair, “I’m very sick”. Carter looks at her with a puzzled look and with tears in her eyes Jamie painfully admits:

“I’m dying Landon, I have leukemia. I warned you not to fall in love with me but you did anyways”. And bitterly sobbing, she runs away.

            At this very moment, the viewer can see from the camera’s angle how intense the emotion is between them, with Carter’s confusion after hearing these words and Jamie’s misery after revealing what’s going on with her. Shankman does a great job in having a close-up at this point so he can grab the viewer’s attention on the intensity of the moment.

            Along with this movie goes a soundtrack. Sang by Mandy Moore herself, Cry tells the poignant story of how the couple met, and how through it all they try to work it out.

            Now this movie has received a lot of negative critiques many concerning the actors and the story. A lot of people thought that the story was too unreal and too childish. People like Neil Smith, a movie reviewer for BBC movies, qualify the movie as being “a tooth-rottingly sentimental weepie”.

This should not be considered totally accurate because the actors made a great job in presenting the story to the audience. One can definitely perceive how genuinely and with how great of a passion, the actors get into their characters and act out the plot. A lot of vivid emotions are involved in this piece and there are many things to get out of the movie and seeing it is the best way to find out what they are.

Surely at the end of the movie, Jamie dies but the real question that is left to the viewer at this point is what happens with Carter after she’s gone and how the time she spent with him made an impact in his life.

To some, it’s probably not the best way to end a movie but with this unanswered question left to the viewer, Shankman lets his audience anticipate their own idea of the end.

Work Cited

A Walk to Remember.  Adam Shankman. DiNovi Pictures. 25 Jan 2002.

Smith, Neil. Movie Reviewer for BBC. 11 Sep 2002. 7 May 2008 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/09/02/a_walk_to_remember_2002_review.shtml].

[http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MG/196028~A-Walk-to-Remember-Posters.jpg].

[http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2006/celebdatabase/mandymoore/mandy_moore1_300_400.jpg].

[http://images.starpulse.com/pictures/2007/02/22/previews/Shane%20West-SGG-042621.jpg].

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=3WA7I_iHXXM].