Chance of a ghost

If I Stay

Crit

First thing I did after watching this was call my daughter to tell her that if she ever writes a family like this, I'm retiring as executive producer. But it didn't even occur to me until after articulating that to myself that in Scary Normal she already wrote an infinitely more palatable version of the same family.

In the present film, the protagonist teenage girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) is comparable to SN's Chelsea, and is the one well-drawn, recognizably human character in the family. And like Chelsea, Mia is the "normal" one who doesn't fit in--the one into classical cello while her ostentatiously hip parents and cloyingly clever little brother groove on dinosaur rock.

But while all three subsidiary characters are objectionable on merit, what really made me happy to see them all killed in a car accident was how written their dialogue sounded, how painstakingly crafted to make them lovable.

This film is drawing sub-50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and I wouldn't have bothered with it at all had not A. O. Scott compared it to The Fault in Our Stars, which I loved. Without going through the whole Lloyd Bentsen-vs.-Dan Quayle shtick, let me just say that this is no Fault. It in, in fact, a sort of cynical riff on two adolescent fantasies: (1) guilt-free family elimination and (2) the sorrow and regret of those left behind by one's own death.

That said, it's not terrible. Moretz is a big part of why it's not terrible; another is rock music ostensibly produced by a band in the story that doesn't suck, a rare accomplishment indeed. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it, but if you have MoviePass and can see it for free, you may discover that it's not a complete waste of time.

Trailer

• Dolphin Tale 2--Oh. My. God of aquatic mammals. This looks very much as if it could be the worst motion picture ever made.