5/10

Chloe Moretz is a teenage girl stuck at a crisis between life or death after a car wreck severely injures her and kills the rest of her family. Her choice is to live to stay with her grandparents and boyfriend or die and never go through any of the pain of being alone. If I Stay is full of good stand alone performances most notably from Moretz. This is the role that gives her the biggest transformation in her young career.The problem is that the performances aren’t enough to support a script that is full of situations and characters who are hard to relate to. That alone can ruin such deep performances. The option of living or dying didn’t seem that tough to me even for her whole family passing. Mia (Moretz) isn’t suicidal, she is a Juliard accepted Cello player, and she has a boyfriend who she is madly in love with. What does death solve in this question? Why is this decision so hard? The relationship with her boyfriend (Jamie Blackley) is another problem i had with the film. A female viewer might view things differently, but i found Adam to be controlling and unsupportive. He seemed to only care about himself which came across as arrogant even for a teenager. Their relationship doesn’t cast the best light for their chemistry, and every dialogue scene is met with extreme awkwardness. Going back to what i said about the question, i feel like this film would’ve been better if Moretz was suicidal or very depressed. She is a character who hasn’t lived life outside of Portland, so i can’t imagine why we are put through 100 dull and repetitive minutes just to come to an answer that never feels satisfying. Speaking of unsatisfying, the ending is ever bit of it. Just after the result is revealed, the movie just ends. We get no feedback from the other characters or no reaction….it just ends. What is most frustrating about this is that the character feels dead no matter what the result (No spoiler there). Some bright spots in the film were the supporting characters. Stacy Keach in particular is the best part of this movie. He plays Mia’s grandfather who is literally on the heels of losing everyone he loves in one accident. You feel Keach’s pain because he is a student of the acting game who knows what kind of looks it takes to get through to the audience. One of the toughest things to accept from these characters is that they live in Portland, but they talk like a Nicolas Sparks novel. No teenager ever talks like the ones in this movie. Also, very nice to see Mirelle Enos and Joshua Leonard as Mia’s parents. They are very down to earth because they are the same people that Adam is. I wish we got more camera time with these characters and their close relationship to Mia, and it would hit us a lot harder when these characters die. Instead, we are left to fill in the blanks through scenes that would rather focus on her relationship with Adam. The soundtrack is good and bad. The good comes from cover songs done in a creative accoustic way like “Today” by The Smashing Pumpkins, or “Halo” by Beyonce. The negative from the soundtrack comes from the tone deaf original songs played by Adam’s band. They play no less than four songs, and i wanted to hear a screaming baby rather than their awful tones throughout the film. When comparing this film to The Fault in Our Stars, i look at this as the weaker film because TFIOS knew what buttons to push to jerk the tears. It shows a relationship and only needs to focus on the strong performances to translate the real pain. I don’t doubt that the ladies will enjoy this movie. I expect a lot of backlash from the female audience, and that is why i am going to recommend it to them. I have no doubt that this film was meant for them and only them. The male audience will get nothing from this. If you are going to see the film, i would wait till dollar theater showings. If i could say one summary for If I Stay, it would be that the film is just good enough for anyone who likes a tearjerker, but not good enough for anyone who doesn’t like these movies to not cry out in boredom.