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| Teen Love on Life Support: Jamie Blackley and Chloe Grace Moretz in "If I Stay." |
The world of a gifted young musician is turned upside
down after a car accident claims the lives of her parents and little brother in
"If I Stay," an initially likable but increasingly manipulative drama
directed by R.J. Cutler, written by Shauna Cross and based on a novel of the
same name by Gayle Forman.
Chloe Grace Moretz takes the lead as Mia, a teenager
born to a couple of hipsters including a dad who used to be part of a rock band.
Music runs in the family and Mia goes the classical route, preferring Beethoven
over Debbie Harry and picking the cello as her favorite instrument. The move
flummoxes her parents, two long time punk fans, but they come around and Dad
even parts with some of his cherished old equipment to bankroll Mia’s first
fiddle.
Mia’s life seems pretty good—she’s got an offer to study
at a prestigious music school in New York and things are getting serious
with a new boyfriend, a handsome singer named Adam (Jamie Blackley)—until the
family decides to take a road trip in the middle of winter in Oregon. No matter
how good the characters drive, the minute you see a car traveling down one of
those winding, two-lane country roads where the trees are blanketed idyllically
in fresh snow, you know something awful is about to happen.
It does, but thankfully the movie spares us bloody
details. What we do see in the aftermath of the crash is Mia, her face ashen
with fright but otherwise remarkably unharmed. That’s because this Mia is a
spirit, or something to that effect, and the real one is badly banged up and clinging
to life. Fortunately, Mia’s doppelganger keeps things moving by guiding us through
important flashbacks—most of them having to do with how music interrupts Mia’s
blossoming teenage romance—as well as standing by in the hospital when
teary-eyed visitors stop in and choke their way through florid bedside pep talks to
the comatose Mia.
Moretz, a splendid talent with a wide range of
expression, is very engaging here as a gifted young artist just beginning to
find a voice through her instrument. The movie might have worked had it stuck
with exploring her life rather than settling into its cold and morbid rhythm of
tediously ruminating on the possibility of death. Instead, clichéd and maudlin,
“If I Stay” plays like shuffling a deck of tearjerker cards—no matter how they are
dealt, you still end up getting the same hand.
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