BEFORE: You can see from the credits below that this film connects to a few romance movies that I watched last year or the year before - like "Get Over It", "Down to You" and "The Object of My Affection". So, it was omitted, and essentially stranded by me watching THOSE movies and not being able to work this one it. But maybe it wasn't available, it's on Netflix now but I'm not sure exactly how long it's been there - or maybe it just wasn't on my radar yet. Anyway, Shane West was in four high-school based romance films before graduating to more grown-up roles, and I've seen two of them already, and this week I'll knock out the other two - but probably in the process of watching films this year I'll be unintentionally stranding others, like "How to Deal" and "Because I Said So" and "Cousins" - it can't be helped. The best I can do is get my list of romance films trimmed down to 70 films or so, and then re-evaluate the connections for the next possible romance chain.
Peter Coyote carries over from "Moonlight and Valentino". Valentine's Day may have come and gone, but I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this year's planned romance chain, so there's still a long way to go, almost a month's worth.
EDIT: I forgot that Turner Classic Movies was starting their "31 Days of Oscar" programming on February 9, so I'm going back and dropping them in post facto. They're dividing up the movies by category this year, so today is Day 7, devoted to:
Best Original Story Nominees:
6:00 am "The Public Enemy" (1931)
7:30 am "Bachelor Mother" (1939)
9:00 am "My Favorite Wife" (1940)
10:30 am "The Search" (1948)
12:30 pm "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946)
2:30 pm "The Narrow Margin" (1952)
4:00 pm "A Guy Named Joe" (1943)
6:15 pm "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1942)
Best Original Story Winners:
8:00 pm "A Star Is Born" (1937)
10:00 pm "One Way Passage" (1932)
11:15 pm "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955)
1:30 am "The Stratton Story" (1949)
3:30 am "49th Parallel" (1941)
Wow, I've seen TWO out of these 13, just "The Public Enemy" and "My Favorite Wife" - they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel today, screening the worst of the best, I guess. I have seen "Heaven Can Wait", but not "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" - and I have seen THREE versions of "A Star Is Born", but not the 1937 one. So I'm falling way behind today - 32 seen out of 79 overall, or 40.5%.
THE PLOT: Two North Carolina teens are thrown together after Landon gets into trouble and is sentenced to perform community service.
AFTER: I just learned the word "situationship" a couple of days ago, it's a portmanteau word, which I love, for a relationship that got formed from people being in a particuar situation together, whether that's working at the same job or living in the same building - so, basically all relationships are situationships to some degree, and all romance-based movie plots start with somebody thinking of a situation, a reason why these two people would meet. Already this February, "Boys and Girls" and "Loser" depicted similar situationships where people met in high school or college, and tried to make the best of things.
This film is based on a book by Nicolas Sparks, who's a bit like the Stephen King of romance novels, in that he's written a ton of them, and if a movie got made of one, and it comes my way, I should probably watch it. I've seen "Message in a Bottle", "The Notebook", "Nights in Rodanthe", and now this one, and I've got one more of his on this year's chain, and "Dear John" I'll have to save for another time. So far 11 movies have been made from his books, and that's nothing to sneeze at - so I'll have to put the remainder on the "someday/maybe" list.
A number of themes carry over from "Moonlight and Valentino", but I can't really say what they are without spoilers. I've probably already said too much - but Sparks based his book on the story of his younger sister, who died of breast cancer in 2000, and that probably tells you all that you need to know. For some reason, the song "Cannonball" by The Breeders also is heard in both yesterday's film and today's. Go figure, but that's only weird because the films were released seven years apart, and it was already TEN years old by time it was used in "A Walk to Remember".
But anyway, this is the story of Landon Carter, a teen who gets in trouble for hazing a classmate, using peer pressure to make him jump off of a tall tower at a quarry so he could be part of the "cool kids" group. Yeah, cool kids don't make you do dangerous stunts, it's not worth it, duh. The kid belly flops and gets hurt, also maybe he forgot to mention to the cool kids that he can't swim. Most of the other cool kids escape before the cops arrive, but Landon tries to stay, then realizes his mistake and drives off, but the police force him to crash into a barrier. He's injured and forced to do community service, janitorial work at the school AND he has to tutor other students in math AND he has to participate in the school play.
It seems like a lot, I would have suggested just making him sweep up because being in the school play seems like fun. But this all leads to the situationship, because Jamie, the minister's daughter (who his cool kids group constantly made fun of, because she only owns one sweater) also tutors students after school and she's also in the school play. Landon is made the male lead in the play (which was written by another student, so you know it just HAS to be awful...) and of course, this puts him in a romantic role with Jamie, and since they're going to be spending a lot of time rehearsing together, you can see where all of this is obviously heading. Sorry, I'm two weeks into the romance chain and already very cynical about these set-ups.
Jamie has a list of things she wants to achieve in life, and some of them are very abstract, like "be in two places at once" and "witness a miracle". For some reason she doesn't have concrete things on the list, like "ride a roller coaster" or "see a Broadway play". But Landon helps her cross some items off her list, only some licenses are taken in the interpretation of the items. Jamie offers to help Landon learn his lines for the play, however on the condition that he NOT fall in love with her. Easier said than done, I suppose, because as we've seen countless times, that's what happens when two people are both there for each other and spend so much time together. Then Landon starts making a list of his own, and it's more concrete things like "get into medical school" and "build a bigger telescope for Jamie". This helps her fulfill her dream of seeing a particular comet, but exactly how many other items she's going to be able to get to, we're just not sure. So I suppose the comet is kind of a metaphor here, it's visible, but not for long.
This process of mine is all about making decisions, like I could either follow the Ted Danson or the Whoopi Goldberg path after "Made in America" - and after this one I can either follow the Mandy Moore or the Shane West path, and I'm choosing Shane West, because I know that's going to get me to the end of February and then to St. Patrick's Day. I've got like 27 films to go and I think 6 of them have Jennifer Lopez in them. But that's my process.
Also starring Shane West (last seen in "Get Over it"), Mandy Moore (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Daryl Hannah (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Lauren German (last seen in "Down to You"), Clayne Crawford (last seen in "Swimfan"), Paz de la Huerta (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Al Thompson (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Jonathan Parks Jordan, Matt Lutz, David Andrews (last seen in "Fair Game"), David Lee Smith (last seen in "Mank"), Xavier Hernandez (last seen in "Happy Campers"), Marisa Miller, Paula Jones, Erik Smith (last seen in "Cold Mountain"), Robert C. Treveiler (last seen in "The Rage: Carrie 2")
RATING: 5 out of 10 quotes that are really Bible passages (is this a Christian film? Part of how our country got so much religion mixed up in our politics? I should probably take points off for that.)
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