Monday, May 11, 2009

A Walk To Remember: Teenage Stuff

A Walk to Remember

Landon Carter could not wait to get out of Beaufort. Your typical high school student, he lived one day at a time, with peers who could not care less about school.

Jaime Sullivan, the town Reverend’s daughter, was the most boring person in school: immersed in books, seated alone in the cafeteria, spent the weekend teaching underprivileged kids. Her greatest ambition was “to witness a miracle.”

The two were very unlikely to get together, much less be seen together. But when Landon got into trouble at school, he found himself in Jaime’s company. He asked Jaime to help him read lines after school, for the drama he was unfortunate to have been forced into. Jaime acceded, with one condition:

Jaime: You have to promise not to fall in love  with me.

Landon: That’s not a problem.

I need not go on to inform everybody that Landon Carter, hot-shot in his school, fell in love with Jaime Sullivan, the school’s most obscure person. That’s the beauty of the movie: two people who are unlikely to fall in love with each other, do fall in love with each other. The plot may not be novel, but the movie could have been spectacular. Sadly, it wasn’t. The way it was made had in mind those stories from the Sweet Dreams books, books I read when I was in primary and secondary school. Having said that, I am thus disappointed that aside from the names of the characters, and the place that is Beaufort, I lost Nicholas Sparks’ novel. I’m thinking that coincidentally, the movie carried the same title as the novel. So did Nicholas Sparks intend the novel to be for lovesick teenagers? Or did he have the adults in mind too? Because, honestly, all I got from the movie was teenage stuff. Poignant, yes. Sweet, yes. But it spelled TEENAGE in neon lights.

I totally digged the soundtrack though.

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