The new YA adaptation starring Chloë Grace Moretz may ruin you, but not in the way the filmmakers intended. Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Doane Gregory/Warner Bros./Metro-Goldwin-Mayer
1. Movies about pretty teenagers dying are so hot right now, and If I Stay is no The Fault In Our Stars. The latter is sardonic and more raw, and about what it's like to grow up in the shadow of death. The former is gauzy and a touch supernatural, with heroine Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) spending most of the movie's runtime wandering around a hospital as a Coma Ghost after a terrible car crash that claims her family members' lives, trying to determine if, per the title, she should pick life or go into the light. The latter is about a girl who's living with cancer, and the former is about a girl whose biggest stressor, until the accident, was being caught between studying cello at Juilliard or staying in Portland with her dreamy, rock star boyfriend Adam Wilde (Jamie Blackley).
2. But of course, If I Stay is an effort to capitalize on the same audience as TFIOS, even if they diverge in their approaches to extracting tears. If I Stay is also adapted from a best-selling YA novel, this one by Gayle Forman, and if it isn't technically "sick-lit," it does aim for the same weepy sweet spot of young people having to wrestle with mortality before they've had much of a chance to live. It, too, is built around a swoony romance between Adam, the slightly older cool kid, who sweetly but persistently woos Mia after falling for her cello playing. The movie, which was written by Shauna Cross (Whip It) and directed by R.J. Cutler (The September Issue), doesn't come packing an equivalent to "'OK?' 'OK'" — but that's not for lack of effort.
Warner Bros./Metro-Goldwin-Mayer
