Thursday, April 24, 2014

How to Deal (2003)


IMDb plot summary: A teenager, disillusioned by too many examples of love gone wrong, refuses to believe that true love exists. Then this new guy comes along...
Directed by Clare Kilner. Starring Mandy Moore, Allison Janney, and Trent Ford.

This movie is very flawed, but there are moments of it that really work. All the different subplots are interesting, even if they don't fit together very well. The central love story is a nice one, even if it gets resolved rather abruptly. The female lead is a great character, even if she is acted rather terribly by Mandy Moore. And Allison Janney is fantastic, as always -- no "even if"s about her or her character. It really makes me want to read the books this movie was based on, because I feel like this is movie had a lot of potential but was only half-baked, and it makes me wonder if the key issues I have with it are also present in the books. This certainly isn't a terrible movie, and anyone who relates strongly to the characters involved or gets invested in the stories will probably be able to overlook all the awkwardness in the execution and enjoy it.

2.5 stars.

Flickchart: #1032 out of 2112, below Thank You for Smoking and above Nacho Libre.

1 comment:

Hayley! said...

Ok, so the reason I picked this movie is because it meant something to me because I read the book. I had read one of the books it is based on twice and then my mom brought home the movie. We watched it together not knowing and there were just too many parallels to be a coincidence. The book I read is fantastic. It is based more off the Hally-Scarlett-Macon parts and develops Scarlett a lot too. It's just very young adult. So it may seem childish.