Movie Review: If I Stay

If I Stay provides a supernatural twist to a classic girl-meets-boy story, but it plays out like nothing more than a gimmick.

By Asyraf Kamil

PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures

If I Stay

Drama (PG13)
Chloe Grace Moretz, Jamie Blackley
105 min

Gayle Foreman’s 2009 bestselling novel about a supernatural love story, If I Stay, has appealed to masses of young adults, but the movie adaptation proves that mushy material is sometimes best left on paper.

The idea of eternal love is weaved excessively into every scene, and it doesn’t work well at pivotal moments of the movie. It also causes sequences to blend into each other breathlessly, and while this may have worked in the novel, the nuances of the story are lost on those unfamiliar with it.

The film tells the story of Mia Hall (Chloe Grace Moretz), a 16-year-old cello prodigy whose life is upended after she gets into a horrific car accident together with her family. Mia wakes up on a snow patch, disoriented but unhurt. All seems well, until she finds her body hauled onto a stretcher. She then realises that she is in a coma and that she is going through an out-of-body experience. Seeing herself on the operating table, Mia overhears a nurse whispering into her ears: “If you live, if you die, it’s all up to you.”

The movie goes on to show Mia as a spirit of sorts, wandering around and observing doctors, and having contemplative flashbacks of the crucial points in her life, many of which revolve around her first love, Adam Wilde (Jamie Blackley). The rebellious Wilde is an up-and-coming rock star; his band is starting to break out in Portland’s indie music scene.

However, their relationship hits a rough patch when Mia receives an acceptance letter from a prestigious performing arts institute, The Juilliard School, while Adam tours the country with his band, resulting in them drifting apart.

Hovering within the confines of the hospital, Mia soon learns about the fate of her family members. Unwilling to let go of her past, she finds herself in limbo as she decides whether to ‘stay’, with so many things changing around her, or to move on from the physical world.

If I Stay falls prey to a sappy dialogue that is hard to stomach — even for the most thick-skinned romantics.

“I want you to play me like a cello,” says Adam, as the couple gets intimate. Cheesy and ludicrous statements like these, scattered throughout the movie, make it hard for us to truly sympathise with the characters.

The lack of chemistry between Moretz and Blackley also creates a sense of removal from the film’s central theme of first love. Their uncomfortable interactions become jarring, especially when both actors thrive in scenes with other characters.

Moretz comes alive when her character interacts with her grandfather (Stacy Keach), and these scenes are full of restrain and tenderness. Blackley, for his part, looks truly at ease only when he is on stage performing with his band, providing some of the best music in a soundtrack that propels much of the narrative.

The heady mix of acoustic covers and original songs recorded by Blackley saves the film from being a total failure. The band’s remix of Smashing Pumpkin’s classic anthem, Today, into a campfire song is the highlight of the movie.

Nevertheless, for a film that emphasises on an epic romance, the audience never gets to witness the passion and excitement of young love. The lead actors’ cool demeanour towards each other reflects the blistery Portland locale where the film is set in, and unfortunately, it is also indicative of the audience’s icy reception.