The latest adaptation of a young adult novel (though I had never heard about the book except when mentioned in connection with the film), "If I Stay" fails to impress, despite two very good performances from Chloe Grace Moretz and Stacy Keach.
The film follows Mia (Moretz) who, in the opening minutes, is involved in a car accident that kills off the rest of her immediate family while leaving her comatose. The twist is that her consciousness (or soul, or whatever) is freed from her body, and she can wander around the hospital, observing her friends and family members. Eventually, she has to decide whether she wants to live or die. But first, she (and the audience) are "treated" to a series of flashbacks, most of which show the ups and downs of her budding romance with rock musician Adam (Jamie Blackley). This is where the film starts to fall apart.
When so much of the focus is on the romance, it's integral that it be convincing. Unfortunately the character of Adam is a virtual charisma vacuum. Whether this is the script's or Blackley's fault I'm not sure, though I suspect it's a bit of both. The material he's given isn't very good, but Moretz is given similar material in their scenes together, and she's able to make it work. She's one of the best actresses in her age group right now, and is showing a tendency to be the standout feature in otherwise remarkable films (as in last year's remake of "Carrie"). She delivers her dialogue with thoughtful, sometimes quirky pauses, lending a sense of realistic spontaneity to the otherwise staid material. Her performance can't elevate the material, but she's able to deliver it with her dignity intact. She's convincing enough that I can believe her character is interested in Adam. Blackley's performance, however, leaves me wondering why?
For a movie hell bent on being a tear-jerker, there was only one scene that I found to be genuinely moving. There were several scenes of friends and family sitting by Mia's hospital bed, imploring her to live (and imploring the audience to cry), but they tended to fall flat. The one that worked featured Stacy Keach as Mia's grandfather, telling her that if she wanted to die, that was okay, too. Keach was given a little screen time before this, but not enough to really set up the moment. The only thing that made it work was the raw power of his acting, and make the scene work it did.
If the film had jettisoned the young adult mandated romance plotline and had instead, from square one, been about the grandfather-granddaughter relationship between Keach and Moretz, it might have actually been something new, interesting, and very good. Admittedly it would have been a drastically different film (and nothing like the book it's based on, I'm sure), but being drastically different couldn't have been anything but good for this film. It had a couple good things going for it, and should have focused on them. Instead it took its weakest element, an underwritten romance featuring a bland love interest, and made that the focus instead, to the exclusion of everything else.
D+
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