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A Walk To Remember
Release
Date: September 13th 2002
Distributor: Helkon SK
Certificate: PG
Starring: Shane West, Mandy Moore,
Peter Coyote, Daryl Hannah, Lauren German, Clayne Crawford
Director: Adam
Shankman
Running Time:
101 mins
‘A
Walk To Remember’ is set in North Carolina, USA, in the mid 1990s
and it follows the changes that happen to a young man as he moves away from
the influence of his high-spirited peers, to another kind of spirit…Landon Carter (West), is a troubled teenager, who with a bunch of his beer-drinking and swearing mates attends an initiation ceremony which goes terribly wrong. During the rite one of his buddies ends up jumping off of some high scaffolding, and ends paralysed after falling into a very shallow river…
To
punish him for his part in this dumb and dangerous prank, Carter is sentenced
by his school principal to do some community service, which includes participating
in the school play. Now Landon was cool, his friends were cool, he even
drove a car! And to have to learn lines and appear in a geeky play is about
the worst punishment he could get. But as he works to get it right, he starts
to become friendly with the sort of person he would never even have spoken
to before.Jamie Sullivan (Moore) is a cute high school senior who sings in the church choir and whose father is the local reverend (Coyote). Before he began to actually speak to her, Jamie was one of the people that Landon and his friends used to ridicule – not for being weird, but just for being so normal!
But
in this film just being near to her is enough to expel from Landon all thoughts
of his previous life. He even eschews hip-hop, rap and rock for the Christian
pop that Jamie loves. And when she belts out a gooey ballad during the performance
of the play, he is hooked.It’s here that the film changes from teen drama to melodrama as Jamie tearfully informs Landon that she told him NOT to fall in love with her as she is not going to be around for long.
I
won’t spoil the sugary ending by telling you where or why she’s
going, but far from being a life changing experience (as indeed the book
that the film is adapted from is claimed to be) ‘A Walk To Remember’
is a soppy teen romance with an unhappy ending.That said, the performances by Moore and West are quite convincing, and it is possible that some viewers of the film, will be enthralled by a film about teenagers that doesn’t just revolve around sex, beers, road trips or pies.
Go see it and make up your own mind.
Clayton Everett
Click
Below to see more pictures from the movie
