A Walk to Remember review: A predictable teen movie

Shamelessly manipulative film and yet the performances are pleasing and believable.

The unlikely romance between Landon, Shane West, the coolest guy in Beaufort High School and Jamie, Mandy Moore, nerdy but self-possessed daughter of the local Baptist minister, Peter Coyote, begins when Landon, as punishment for an irresponsible act that causes physical damage to another student, is ordered by the headmaster to take part in community service and to sign up for the school play. Jamie is also in the play. Landon and his mates make fun of Jamie?s seriousness and her fashion sense but when he needs to learn his lines she?s the one he turns to for help. Of course he snubs her in front of his friends, but when she snubs back in private he?s devastated. Much against the wishes of her father and to the amazement of his friends Landon and Jamie are drawn to one another. There?s a strangely old-fashioned feel to this very wholesome film which has been updated to the present from the 1950?s setting of Nicholas Sparks? novel on which it?s based. It?s terribly predictable at just about every turn, it?s shamelessly manipulative and yet the performances are pleasing and believable, despite Daryl Hannah looking ever so frumpish as Landon?s single mother. A Walk to Remember tends towards the mawkish, particularly in the second half, but director Adam Shankman presents his story of love, faith and redemption in a simple, untaxing way. It?s the sort of film that Christian churches would want to show young parishioners. Whether other teens flock to this is to be seen.