Nicole’s Basic Basic Cable Unsolicited Movie Review 1-

What, you ask, is Basic Basic Cable? Oh, kids, it's just swell! It means there is a cable hooked up to my TV causing it to get good reception on network TV channels, as well as 6 dozen Spanish channels and TBS. I don't even get Lifetime, which I think prisons and mental health facilities get. My options are reduced to the point where I actually sit through a great many shitty movies, and so, Nicole's Basic Basic Cable Unsolicited Movie Reviews are born! Time to get Excited!
Today's feature is "A Walk to Remember" starring Mandy Moore and Some Guy. Daryl Hannah is there as well, in a really bad brown wig.

The plot is this: Mandy is your typical highschool edition of the Krazy Khristian- ya know, the minister's daughter who brings the bible to school and listens to OAR. Some Guy plays Landon, a highschool Bad Boy, who listens to generic rock and hangs out with assholes (seriously, his friends are just awful. Even for heathens). So at the start Landon and the Get Along Gang are out at the old factory, where they drink! and swear! and make out! and also dare this dorky guy to jump in a body of water, only to have said dorky guy hurt himself in a vague undisclosed manner and end up in the hospital. Landon is caught at the scene of the 'crime' and put on probation. Probation in this movie is defined as working with disadvantaged youth and being forced to HAVE THE LEAD IN THE SCHOOL PLAY. Maybe this is what I should have done in highschool so I could play Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

Landon's probation puts him in the path of Mandy, who attempts to befriend/save him on the bus on the way home from Disadvantaged Youth Camp one day. Let me just say at this point, what is it about movie portrayals of Christians and how they dress? I mean, Mandy in this movie is wearing clothes so heinous that one would only expect to see them in a Save-the-Children ad or on Roseanne Barr circa 1993. Seriously, large denim mu-mus and mom-jeans and dingey shapeless sweaters. And she's not supposed to be poor, or retarded, just Christian.

SO blah blah blah, they slowly get to know eachother, and Mandy helps Landon learn his lines, and he disavows her (like Christ!) in front of his friends, and then it's the BIG NIGHT. And they do this play that features the Mandster in a nice dress and makeup singing a pop song apres po of nothing, and little hearts flare in Landon's eyes. {Note: The blocking in this part is unintentionally brilliant, as it is the worst blocking I have ever seen, w/ Mandy sitting down and standing up in her song like she's in Catholic Church; it's actually is quite a lot like a highschool play.}

So then we dick around w/ plot points I don't care to recap and they begin dating and Falling In Love. Landon does all these really charming things to help his socially retarded girlfriend check off items on her "Life's To Do List" and defends her honor to his (rather understandably) non-plussed friends. This part of the movie is actually pretty cute and awful at the same time. Like my pug's face.

And then (spoiler alert) the Big News, Mandy has The Leukemia. And she will die. And I have puked in my own mouth and swallowed it back to where it came from. Landon cries, Mandy cries, I cry for the 2 hours of my life lost forever. And finally, we get our "Walk to Remember" when Landon marries Mandy thus checking off her "Number One thing" on the aforementioned list before she goes off to that big Jars of Clay concert in the sky.

Unfortunate things about this movie: Nearly everything. But specifically:
-1. The dialogue has jarring use of the word "Baby" as in "Baby, I'll never let that happen" which makes these very young characters come off as dated.
-2. Mandy Moore has a slight speech impediment like Eek the Cat.
-3. The soundtrack of Christian Alternative Music, crammed so tightly together that no moment is ever without song. Like, we get 20 seconds of one song, and then 20 seconds of another, with 4 seconds of silence in between.
-4. and, obviously, Raging Predictability at every turn.

Less than unfortunate things about this movie:
-1. Mandy Moore is actually pretty cute, other than the speech impediment thing.
-2. I like the melody of the pop song she sings, if I close my eyes and don't watch the blocking and suspend disbeleif so that the fact that the song is completely out of place doesn't faze me.
-3. Landon's car is cool.
-4. I actually don't feel that Mandy's religion is over-blown after the first half hour of expository choir singing/bible carrying. It's still the third wheel in their love triangle, but it's not as overt as I imagined it would be.

So there you have it. Not a rental I would recommend, unless you really heart Mandy Moore, or denim mu-mu's, or you're 11. It had a couple of sweet moments, but they were few and far between; kind of like your dog swallowed your favorite necklace and you have to wait until he craps it out and than spray it w/ a garden hose to find it in all the pooh and by then, do you really even want it anymore? Yeah, kind of like that.

So there is my first NBBCUMR (wow, that anagram is unintentionally dirty sounding). Look for more in the future, as financially, I don't see myself getting beyond the Basic Basic connection anytime soon.