How is this the first time I've seen A Walk to Remember?

So I lay MY head BACK down

By all accounts, I should have seen A Walk to Remember when it came out in 2002. I was in high school and my parents had strict rules around what I could and couldn’t see in the theater; I once got grounded for going to see The Mexican because it was rated R (do you recall anything particularly racy in The Mexican? Do you even remember The Mexican at all?). This would’ve been a perfect movie for me to see because it’s not offensive in any way (well, not intentionally). I’m even pretty sure I read the book, but it may have been another Nicholas Sparks book.

Here’s where I should admit that I hold a little bit of a grudge against Nicholas Sparks. Nicholas Sparks is a name all romance novelists know very well, because when people (who aren’t romance readers) find out you write romance, they tend to do one of two things. First, they’ll tell you their opinion on Fifty Shades of Grey. And then they’ll ask if you write books like Nicholas Sparks. Which is frustrating because Nicholas Sparks doesn’t really write romance, at least not per the official definition. He writes love stories, but his books do not have happily ever afters. At least not the ones I’ve read, because the women die (sorry to spoil A Walk to Remember).

The only consolation is that Nicholas Sparks seems as annoyed by this genre confusion as romance authors are. He’s been very down on romance as a genre, insisting that he doesn’t write it, which is technically true. But he also, in setting himself up as not romance, compared himself to Casablanca, A Farewell to Arms, and Shakespeare. Yes, this was a long time ago and yes, I’m still thinking about it.

I get it. Interviews are tough. Who among us hasn’t found ourselves rambling and saying something we regret later at 2 am when we’re staring at the ceiling and wondering how big of an idiot we’ll look like when that article publishes/that news story airs/that podcast drops? But one thing I recommend avoiding is comparing yourself to the most famous playwright of all time!

That’s all to say I didn’t see A Walk to Remember when it came out, and I haven’t exactly been in a rush to see it since then. But recently I put out a call for movie recommendations on Instagram and one reader mentioned A Walk to Remember. Call it fate, call it divine intervention, call it a coincidence, but all of a sudden A Walk to Remember was the only movie I wanted to see. I had no idea I was about to be shaken to my core (by the horror of Daryl Hannah’s wig, which haunts my dreams!).

A Walk to Remember isn’t Mandy Moore’s story, as much as I assumed it was. No, it’s Shane West’s story, and he’s a bad boy. How bad, you ask? Well, he shows up at…I don’t know what this place is, a quarry? There’s water. It’s nighttime, and he and his rebellious teenage friends have all apparently driven drunk to this mystery location so they can initiate a new kid they seem to hate into their group. Shane West is a hazer! The new kid shows up and they convince him to jump off a ledge into the water, assuring him that they’ve all done it. Shane West even offers to jump in with him to prove how safe it is. But when the kid jumps, Shane West doesn’t. They all laugh the laughs of mean kids in movies as this kid falls and splashes, but then…he doesn’t resurface, not for a long time. And when he does, he’s face down and motionless.

I gasped on the treadmill (this is a great treadmill movie). I literally said out loud to the basement, “Did they KILL HIM?” Shane West drags this kid out of the water as they all hear sirens and the rebellious drunk friends run away and peel off before the cops get there. Shane West is momentarily conflicted, but very momentarily because he leaves that kid on the shore and tries to get away too, before being caught by the cops.

And that’s how the movie starts! That’s our hero! He’s not Jess Mariano, simply being a little sassy. He almost kills someone, attempts to flee the scene, and then lies about his involvement. That kid is possibly paralyzed (he’s shown in the hospital once…Shane West clears his conscience by talking to him and the kid is basically like, “I could never be mad at you, Shane West”) and Shane West never really seems to feel that bad about it. He doesn’t seem to feel much of anything until he sees…Mandy Moore.

She’s singing in the church choir, because she loves church. And the Bible. And occasionally talking in a vague way about God and/or heaven, but not enough to actually teach you anything about religion. Shane West is like, “whatever, church sucks, I wanna get out of here and buy another chain necklace.” But he’s also like, “who is she?”

to be fair her bangs actually look okay here

She has one sweater. One. It’s unclear if this is because she and her father are poor (although their house is quite nice!) or if the lack of a mother figure has made her stylistically inept or if it’s just because she needs to be tragic and easy to make fun of and one sweater is the easiest way to do that.

She also has the worst hair of the movie, which is really saying something because Shane West has early-2000s spiky hair. And Daryl Hannah, known for being a beautiful woman, plays his mom but she’s wearing the most unflattering wig I’ve ever seen. Who made this decision? It’s so angular, the bangs are awful, the color is bad, the length is terrible. Every time I saw her I was shocked anew.

But it doesn’t hold a candle to Mandy Moore’s inexplicable bangs. Just because she’s unpopular doesn’t mean she needs to have bad bangs!

But Shane West can’t like Mandy Moore, because he has a whole group of hazing friends who make fun of her, including:

-generic mean white kid

-girl who has a crush on Shane West

-Paz de la Huerta (do you remember how teen magazines in the early 2000s were obsessed with her? If you opened up ELLEgirl, there she was)

-his one black friend who calls people “brother” and mentions that he knows how to dance. Roger Ebert said, “It's tiresome to make the black teenager use "brother" in every sentence, as if he is not their peer but was ported in from another world.” LOL, Rog.

All of these friends are like, “ew, Mandy Moore” because…I don’t know, it’s the one sweater thing again. They’re like, “nice SWEATER!” and then they giggle to themselves. Talk about a sick burn.

But Shane West gets thrown together with Mandy Moore again and again, as if fate/God/Nicholas Sparks has a plan for them. His punishment for possibly paralyzing someone is twofold. First, he has to tutor a child, despite previously showing no aptitude for school. Isn’t this more of a punishment for the child? Secondly, he has to be in the school musical, where he gets the lead (???). Also this musical was written by one of the students and it’s about, like, mobsters? I honestly can’t really remember. The movie doesn’t spend nearly enough time highlighting how funny it is that one of the students wrote this noir/gangster musical including an absolute show stopping tune for Mandy Moore. It’s the song that makes Shane West fall in love with her!

This is her “nerdy girl removes her glasses” moment, except that what she changed was…her BANGS! Please note that in every scene where she’s supposed to be “hot,” her bangs are pinned back. Not a coincidence.

Anyway, everyone in the audience is like, “omg, Mandy Moore is a star.” Daryl Hannah is like, “oh my son is going to fall in love with her.”

I didn’t know this was actually a Switchfoot song until yesterday. The internet told me that Mandy Moore loved them and that’s why they’re in the movie so much, but can that really be true? I could name one (1) Switchfoot song, Dare You to Move, which of course is in this film, because they were around during that era when there were a ton of “mainstream” Christian bands (your P.O.D.s, your Relient Ks).

Mandy Moore’s performance of this Switchfoot song, which presumably is about Jesus (so why was it in this musical? So many questions), changes everything for Shane West. Suddenly he’s protecting her at school, ditching his mean friends, taking Mandy Moore on romantic dates, etc.

One of the funniest dates happens because Mandy Moore has a list of things she wants to do in her life (the significance of which will come up again soon) and one of them is “be in two places at once.” Okay, first of all, what does that even mean? Like, in a literal sense, why would a teenager write “be in two places at once” on her bucket list? Of course, it’s only there so Shane West can take her to the state line and be like, “Look babe, you’re standing in two states right now!”

But maybe I’m asking this movie for a level of logic that it couldn’t or shouldn’t provide. I was just listening to a podcast (With Gourley and Rust) today that was talking about how some films don’t exist to make sense on a logical level, they exist to provoke or portray a feeling. The hosts were discussing David Lynch, but perhaps we could also prescribe that explanation to the film A Walk to Remember. Maybe logic doesn’t matter here.

Their relationship progresses to the point that Shane West buys her a second sweater, at which point she immediately ditches her first sweater and now wears only the new, pink sweater. Maybe she’s just a one sweater kinda girl.

But then the big twist happens. The drama. Think Shakespeare. Mandy Moore reveals that she’s sick with a terrible case of Movie Illness, which means she looks and acts perfectly fine until she starts collapsing. This was also the affliction that Winona Ryder had in Autumn in New York. And, much like Richard Gere in Autumn in New York, Shane West does not take it well that she’s sick. First he’s like, “you didn’t TELL ME??? When you knew I was falling in love with you and I bought you a new sweater???” And then he goes to find his dad, with whom he doesn’t have a close relationship even though one time his mom was like, “you should really call your dad,” and demands that his dad fix Mandy Moore’s leukemia. His dad is like, “Son, I’m a cardiologist.” To which Shane West angrily yells, “I KNEW you wouldn’t help!” before speeding off into the night. I get that he’s frustrated and all, but his dad has a point. He is literally a cardiologist.

Mandy Moore collapses, her one symptom, and is sent to the hospital. All of Shane West’s mean friends eventually come around, even the girl who had a crush on him. His dad pays for Mandy Moore to have in-home care (he’s like, “I may be a simple heart doctor, but one thing I DO have is a ton of money”). And Shane West proposes to Mandy Moore because one of the things on her bucket list was getting married in the church where her parents got married.

I’m not too proud to admit I shed a tear here. Mandy Moore looks so beautiful in her wedding dress (WITH HER BANGS PULLED BACK).

At the end, Landon is like, “We had a great summer and then she died.” This is not a movie that’s interested in any of the practical realities of a person being sick; in fact, it might be the best example I’ve ever seen of Movie Illness.

One of Mandy Moore’s bucket list items was to witness a miracle (which at least makes more sense than being in two places at once!!!), and later, when Shane West is talking to her dad, he says “I’m sorry she never got to see her miracle.” Her dad is like, “But Shane West, she did. It was you.”

And that’s a very nice thought! He was a pretty good boyfriend once he stopped convincing innocent guys to permanently injure themselves in hazing rituals. But it’s pretty clear that she was his miracle. The story is from his perspective. She’s the one who changed him. Jamie herself (oh, yes, her name is Jamie, which I neglected to mention because I called her Mandy Moore throughout this entire post…I’m sorry if that was confusing) is an actually perfect character. She has no flaws, no shortness of temper. She tutors children with a grateful heart, brings down the house in the school musical, and bravely accepts her diagnosis. This is a real “you might be a Nicholas Sparks heroine if…” situation. And then she DIES!

I loved every second of this movie even though it made no sense because it was all about Shane West and Mandy Moore, and they were selling it. Eventually, through my tears, I was like, “we should all be so lucky to have a boyfriend like Shane West.” Because this movie has no irony, not even really about that weird school musical. Everyone in this movie is completely earnest. Mandy Moore is a total innocent. Shane West has a total change of heart. The mean friends all come around. Shane West genuinely believes a cardiologist can cure leukemia. And there’s something refreshing and a little bit amazing about a film that is 100% sincere.

That’s all for this week. Remember, later this month my reread of the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor starts, but that’s only for paid subscribers. I’m really looking forward to it.

And of course I should mention that FAKING CHRISTMAS comes out on Tuesday, September 26th. That’s so soon! You can preorder a signed copy from The Book Loft. And I’m going on book tour! Please come out and see me at one of my stops; I would genuinely love to see you and I’m not just saying that. I’ll have decorated Christmas cookies made by a really talented Columbus baker at my launch event at The Book Loft.

That’s it for now. See you next week, when I’ll be having my regularly scheduled pre-publication breakdown. xo