When I was a little kid, the company my dad used to work for had an annual holiday called “Bring Your Kid to Work Day”. Basically, it was an excuse for the kids to run around the offices playing assorted games and for the adults to slow down and have some fun. As part of the festivities, there was always tons of sweets to be given out to us kids and borrowed by the parents. The first time my dad ever brought me to Bring Your Kid to Work Day, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the cookies and ice cream and cotton candy. I, being approximately six and having no impulse control, gorged myself on the various sweets. Unsurprisingly, I succeeded both in making myself sick and making my father mortified in front of his coworkers, but I learned a valuable lesson about sweets in moderation, and at the next Bring Your Kids to Work Day I showed laudable restraint. Unfortunately, this was a lesson that the creators of If I Stay seemed never to have learned.
If I Stay stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia Hall, a teenage girl who happens to be a prodigy cello player. This in some ways made her a loner both in her family life (both her parents were punk musicians) and her social life (her boyfriend is in a rock band). Throughout her life she has dealt with feelings of inadequacy and isolation. You know, the teenage years we all went through. However, her life takes a turn for the tragic one winter day when she and her family are involved in a car accident. Mia ends up in a coma, but her spirit has been disconnected from her body and she can observe everything going on in the waking world, as well as have convenient flashbacks to various points of her life. It is up to Mia to decide whether “she will stay” or “she will go”.
This movie tastes like diabetes. Here’s Wilford Brimley to really set the mood. It is so sickeningly cute and sweet that it made me want to throw up. And the way in which it shoves all of it down your throat is so cliché. When Mia is thinking that “she will go”, a magical bright light appears down at the end of the hallway that she can walk towards. Mia’s boyfriend Adam is played by Jamie Blackman, who both looks the part of the teen heartthrob and has the background of one; his parents split up when he was little and he’s always been alone, so he formed a bad rock band to cope. Plus, he plays the part so well; when sitting by Mia’s bedside in the hospital he decides to serenade her with a song he wrote for her, and pulls a guitar seemingly right out of his ass. He’s like that asshole we all know who somehow always shows up at parties with an acoustic guitar. And of course, the film shows how even in the most dire of situations, the power of family, friendship, and love can overcome even the most horrible tragedies. The whole movie is like being raped by a sugar maple.
But bizarrely, in and amongst all this sweetness, there’s a significant amount of explicit language. I don’t think anyone ever said fuck, but they said pretty much everything else, including some from the mouth of Mia’s seven year-old brother. In addition, there’s a fair amount of sexually suggestive (if not quite explicit) content in the film. Between those two things, I’m frankly amazed this film was able to get a PG-13 rating, although it is possible that the cut ultimately released to theatres will have some of it edited out. But the whole thing succeeded in confusing me as to the film’s intended audience, as the movie’s themes would be more comfortable in a PG movie while some of the movie’s content really pushes the PG-13 rating.
Plus, there's an absurd amount of product placement for the Julliard School. I mean, I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense, with Mia being a cello prodigy and all, but the sheer amount of times the school's name is said is overwhelming. Seriously, they say it like dozens of times. Apparently Mia, despite being a serious musician, has never heard of any other music school besides that one. It gets to the point where it starts to break the suspension of disbelief for the movie (not that there was much to begin with), and plus its just really annoying.
And the worst part of it is that Chloë Grace Moretz is a really good actress. Sure, she isn’t very good in this, but when you’re handed a script apparently co-written by Willy Wonka and the Carebears, there’s only so much you can do. But we saw her in Kick-Ass and Hugo, we know what she can do when handed a good script. Maybe she needed the cash, maybe she wanted to avoid being typecast after being Hit Girl, but I just really hope I get to see her in something better to wipe away the sickeningly sweet taste of this.
This is the kind of movie that 14 year-old girls will flock to and in all likelihood absolutely adore. I, on the other hand, will be sent to the emergency room after suffering from diabetic shock. Now I need to go watch some really dark and depressing shit to clear my palette. If you need me, I’ll be doing a marathon of Sin City, Pulp Fiction, and Watchmen while frantically stabbing myself with shots full of insulin.
Grade: D
This movie tastes like diabetes. Here’s Wilford Brimley to really set the mood. It is so sickeningly cute and sweet that it made me want to throw up. And the way in which it shoves all of it down your throat is so cliché. When Mia is thinking that “she will go”, a magical bright light appears down at the end of the hallway that she can walk towards. Mia’s boyfriend Adam is played by Jamie Blackman, who both looks the part of the teen heartthrob and has the background of one; his parents split up when he was little and he’s always been alone, so he formed a bad rock band to cope. Plus, he plays the part so well; when sitting by Mia’s bedside in the hospital he decides to serenade her with a song he wrote for her, and pulls a guitar seemingly right out of his ass. He’s like that asshole we all know who somehow always shows up at parties with an acoustic guitar. And of course, the film shows how even in the most dire of situations, the power of family, friendship, and love can overcome even the most horrible tragedies. The whole movie is like being raped by a sugar maple.
But bizarrely, in and amongst all this sweetness, there’s a significant amount of explicit language. I don’t think anyone ever said fuck, but they said pretty much everything else, including some from the mouth of Mia’s seven year-old brother. In addition, there’s a fair amount of sexually suggestive (if not quite explicit) content in the film. Between those two things, I’m frankly amazed this film was able to get a PG-13 rating, although it is possible that the cut ultimately released to theatres will have some of it edited out. But the whole thing succeeded in confusing me as to the film’s intended audience, as the movie’s themes would be more comfortable in a PG movie while some of the movie’s content really pushes the PG-13 rating.
Plus, there's an absurd amount of product placement for the Julliard School. I mean, I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense, with Mia being a cello prodigy and all, but the sheer amount of times the school's name is said is overwhelming. Seriously, they say it like dozens of times. Apparently Mia, despite being a serious musician, has never heard of any other music school besides that one. It gets to the point where it starts to break the suspension of disbelief for the movie (not that there was much to begin with), and plus its just really annoying.
And the worst part of it is that Chloë Grace Moretz is a really good actress. Sure, she isn’t very good in this, but when you’re handed a script apparently co-written by Willy Wonka and the Carebears, there’s only so much you can do. But we saw her in Kick-Ass and Hugo, we know what she can do when handed a good script. Maybe she needed the cash, maybe she wanted to avoid being typecast after being Hit Girl, but I just really hope I get to see her in something better to wipe away the sickeningly sweet taste of this.
This is the kind of movie that 14 year-old girls will flock to and in all likelihood absolutely adore. I, on the other hand, will be sent to the emergency room after suffering from diabetic shock. Now I need to go watch some really dark and depressing shit to clear my palette. If you need me, I’ll be doing a marathon of Sin City, Pulp Fiction, and Watchmen while frantically stabbing myself with shots full of insulin.
Grade: D
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