Movie Review: If I Stay [SPOILERS]

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After I met up with a friend for dinner the other day, I decided to treat myself to a Netflix movie night (now that I have internet again. Yay!). I decided to watch If I Stay. I thought this was going to be a typical teenage romance story (I was imagining something like any of the movies based off of Nicholas Sparks' novels.).

But it was actually rather serious! At the beginning of the movie, the audience is just starting to get to know the female protagonist (played by Chloë Grace Moretz) when BAM! She and her family get in a horrible car crash. Now we are watching her spirit/ghost looking over the scene of the accident, screaming but no one can hear or see her. We take a trip to the hospital and eventually learn that both of her parents died in the crash. Then the movie goes back and forth between the present (her ghost along with her almost dead body) and flashbacks of the past. It's through the flashbacks that we learn about this girl's love for playing the cello, her interest in attending Julliard, and of course her relationship with her boyfriend (played by Jamie Blackley). It's young love between this naive high-school student and her older, rock-and-roll boyfriend. This part of the movie is fine (as long as you keep in mind that this is a movie and love between teenagers isn't really like that). We later learn that her younger brother died in the hospital, so it's just her now. Her ghost has to decide whether she wants to fight to live, or if she is ready to die since her family has been taken from her. The most touching part of the movie was when others come to visit her in the hospital. Her friend says, "We're your family," and her grandfather tells her that although he wants her to live, he understands if she has to go. At the end her boyfriend visits and plays her a song he wrote for her, and tells her she got into Julliard. At that moment, her eyes open, and you figure she's going to survive and they're going to live happily-ever-after. I knew they had to let her survive, otherwise this would be one depressing movie!

A few problems I had with some scenes:

1. At one point she gets stung by a bee on her hand. Her boyfriend suggests he sucks the stinger out WITH HIS MOUTH. First of all, that's snake venom you do that with, not bee stings. Also, the make-up for the bee sting looks more like a serious spider bite! So this scene was completely incorrect.

2. In one of the scenes, they are at a bar where her boyfriend's band is performing. They take shots at the bar. Keep in mind, she's STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL. Don't you think she would have been carded? And I'm not even sure his character is supposed to be 21 yet, either! Bars don't just go handing shots out to minors. Hmpf.

Three out of five stars. Not my favorite, but not bad.