Review of If I Stay

Music is a recurring literal and allegorical motif in If I Stay. In keeping with this tired trend, if If I Stay was a song, it would be a weapy Avril Lavigne ballad: fake, melodramatic, and boring. It's blandness to the nth degree, with little to no style OR substance to pull it out of its own self-absorbed pretension. Who will this movie appeal to? It's too slow for tweens, too tepid for adults. Unless you're looking for something stupid, vapid, depressing, clichéd, annoying, and laughless, don't bother. The movie's essentially a fantasy for shy teenage girls: the dreamy, popular older band-boy inexplicably notices you, pursues you, and falls in love with you. She's a shy but stuck-up classical cellist jerk. Her love interest is a selfishly immature hipster jerk. They are a match made in conceited jerk heaven! But when a tragic accident puts you on the brink of death, your conscience must decide: do I keep living, or do I avoid pain by dying? This pretense could make for some interesting storytelling, with a ghost having to watch her life play out without affecting it…but nope. Moretz, who I normally like, is given nothing to work with and turns in her worst performance to date. A bevy of Portlandia-style caricatures parade around screen shooting for authenticity and consistently missing. I couldn't contain my eye-rolling at the onslaught of cynical clichés and bad quips about the "power" of music. Some decent scenes of actual musicianship, a couple of good performances (Grandpa), and a modicum of sweetness are completely overwhelmed by the inauthentic and never-ending dullness.