Monday Movie Review: A Walk To Remember

Based on the book “A Walk To Remember” by Nicholas Sparks; Set in North Carolina, "A Walk To Remember" follows the rite of passage of a jaded, aimless high school senior (Shane West) who falls in love with a guileless young woman (Mandy Moore) he and his friends once scorned. The two develop a powerful and inspirational relationship in which they discover truths that take most people a lifetime to learn.

 Recently, I reread A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks, which was the inspiration for the 2002 movie A Walk To Remember starring a young Mandy Moore (she was about 17 during the time of filming) and the very dashing Shane West. This movie was released to theaters on January 25, 2002. I remember seeing this in theaters, the opening title and actors' names flashing brightly in a dark theater. Given when this movie was released, there's a high probability that we went to see this movie for my 10th birthday that year. After seeing the movie, I purchased the soundtrack and listened to it over and over again. I was already a fan of Mandy Moore and Switchfoot, who sing the majority of the songs on the album. After rereading the book, I had no choice but to watch the movie, because, duh it's one of the greatest Nicholas Sparks movie adaptions out there.

A little background information on the movie, if by some miracle you haven't seen it yet, which you should, to give you an idea of what you'll be getting into. We opened with a couple friends meeting up at the cement factory where there was a small water reserve, it's here that we meet Landon our main character and his five "closest" friends. Honestly, after all the times, I've seen this movie I can only remember two of the five friends' names, Eric and Belinda, everyone else I forget their names, and after not watching this movie for a while I completely forgot there was a third guy friend even if he has a few lines.  

Anyways, they are clearly waiting around for someone excitedly. They had just come from a school dance where they had been drinking on school property. Man, aren't they just so cool! Who wouldn't want to be their friend? 

 

That's exactly what Clay Gephardt thought when he met up there for his "friendship initiation" by jumping off a structure into a body of water of unknown depth. Landon "offers" to do it with him to make Clay more willing to go along with "initiation". But Landon doesn't jump with him and as Clay falls to the water, all the friends are laughing and cheering that they pranked Clay into jumping to the water. That is until, they notice that Clay is hurt. 

Now everyone is freaking out and screaming for Landon to get him out of the water. Landon is at the top of this structure at this point having to climb down to get to the water to save Clay, while all his friends who were closer just screamed for him to do something and freaking out. I kind of get why Dean, Tracie, and Belinda don't just jump into the water to save Clay (I had to look up Dean and Tracie's name) I didn't understand why Eric couldn't jump in to help Clay from drowning. (Insert mildly racist joke about Eric not knowing how to swim. It's the only logical reason for him not to just jump in to save Clay) Damn, I forgot the third guy again, yeah, he had no excuse not to help my jumping in either. As they are freaking out and Landon has gotten Clay and him swimming back to his friends to have them help pull Clay out, a security guard happens by and calls for the police. At this point, they haven't even gotten Clay out of the water, and every one of Landon's friends except Eric let go of Clay and run away as they didn't want to get in trouble, they are willing to let an injured guy fall back into the water where he could end up dead instead of saving him, really nice friends Landon has, right? 

Eric and Landon get Clay out of the water and Landon tells Eric to go before the cops show up. Landon, at least waits into the cops are nearby and he knows that Clay is alive and breathing before splitting to avoid being caught. Still a shitty move but less so than his so-called friends. Landon ends up in a small car accident as the cop is chasing him. Since he was the only one caught and Clay isn't talking about what happened and the Cement company isn't pressing charges for trespassing, it seems like Landon and his friend escaped without punishment after all. At least until the principal gets involved. Landon thinks he's going to be expelled after the principal presents the evidence of the empty beer bottles he and his friends had at the dance. The principal has other ideas though.  He signs Landon up to volunteer as an after-school janitor, a tutor for young kids on the weekend and has him join the drama club. This brings him in more contact with Jamie Sullivan, the reverend's daughter who volunteers as a tutor on weekends and is a member of the drama club and the Stargazer club that have their meeting after school in the same area that Landon is cleaning as the janitor. Landon is cast as one of the main leads in the Drama Club's play alongside Jamie. At some point, Landon realizes he needs help with his part of the play and he goes to Jamie for help. She agrees on one condition.

"You have to promise you won't fall in love with me."

 

That's just the beginning, I recommend this movie very highly. It is about redemption, personal growth, and above all love.

Landon starts out as a self person with no real direction in his life but Jamie saves him from that. We might not all have a Jamie to assist with the changes that we might need in our lives, but it gives us hope that even if we are like Landon, we have the power to change our lives and take the best from each opportunity that we are given. Little speech over. I enjoyed the fact that Jamie would call Landon only by his last name despite having known each other for years, letting the audience know that they were in no means close to one another, I feel like the first time she calls him Landon is when she's telling him she sick, correct me if I'm wrong. It just showed that they were closer and she was being serious about what she was saying to him.

I give this movie 5 O's for Oh, I'm so in love. I would watch this movie again and again, as I once spent hours listening to the music of it. 

 Check out A Walk To Remember  on Amazon Prime now!