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'How to Deal' goes nowhere
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Media Credit: Sophie Giraud
Trent Ford and Mandy Moore star in the movie �How To Deal.�
It has been almost 20 years since John Hughes and the Brat Pack brought us "The Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink" and "Sixteen Candles," but don't worry; young, beautiful people still have problems.
In "How to Deal," Mandy Moore plays Halley Martin, a sixteen-something who, in between practicing yoga and binging on olives, likes to bitch about love, life and "it all."
As she says in a voice over, this is a film about "how to deal," and believe me, she has plenty to deal with.
A love-struck, pregnant best friend (Alexandra Holden), a bitter divorcee mother (Allison Janney), an embarrassing re-married radio DJ father (Peter Gallagher), a bride-to-be sister (Mary Catherine Garrison), a clumsy reefer-smoking grandma (Nina Foch, and no I'm not making this up) and a quirky, sometimes scary love interest (Trent Ford) all dump their baggage on poor Mandy Moore.
With all this clutter, it's no surprise that the story is mashed together from not one but two Sarah Dessen novels ("Someone Like You" and "That Summer"). With so many directions and no clear focus, this film is a pedestrian standing in the middle of an intersection unable to decide which way to go.
So it goes nowhere.
What director Clare Kilner doesn't realize is that in this case, the right path is the one most traveled. This film's bleeding heart lies in the moist puppy love of its teen stars. Moore has difficulty selling her "Why me? Why do things have to be this way?" crap, but shines as a hard-to-get toughie who's secretly a love-crazed kitten. It's hard to decide whether it's her innocence or rather the possible loss of that innocence that's more alluring (and now that Moore is 19 I can say this without sounding like a perv).
But whatever the case, Moore can act like a teenage girl. A pretentious, generic, fake teenage girl, but a teenage girl nonetheless.
Co-star Trent Ford simply needs to be there to draw from Moore's presence and stay in her shadow like a good boy toy should.
More tragic than teen heartache is how little time "How to Deal" gives to Moore and Ford's courtship. The duo's screen-time is so pinched that Kilner succumbs to the dirty "M" word: montage. Anyone who needs an overblown pop-serenaded clip collection of cutesypie flirting to know that these characters are falling for each other should be quietly asked to leave the theater. Give me their steamy couch make out scene instead. This is really the image of high school life this film captures verbatim. From close quarters clothes fumbling to the nightmarish climax of getting caught by her parents (Busted!!), "How to Deal" proves that making out is definitely a serious issue worthy of more attention. But if making out is all "How to Deal" can handle realistically, what good are the serious issues it doles out so clumsily?
At best, what we have is a glossy trifold brochure on "How to deal with..." buried in a high school counselor's desk. At best our emotional attachment to the characters is similar to how much we can feel for a spreadsheet of faceless statistics on teen pregnancy, divorce and whatever else. Even the comedy "American Pie" makes a better connection with the audience.
Rather than a fresh slice cinema about the road to sexual maturity, we have a pie chart. As for a lesson in love, we learn the one we already know: Boy meets girl, boy loves girl, girl doesn't at first, a bunch of stuff happens and then...she does. Then they go off together, frozen in time as the credits roll.
We should all be so lucky.
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