After popular high school student Landon Carter (Shane West) gets busted for drinking on school property and pulling a prank that nearly killed another student, he’s given a choice. He can either be expelled or he can tutor other students and take part in the school play. At both tutoring and play rehearsals, he gets to know Jamie Sullivan (Mandy Moore), the daughter of the local reverend (Peter Coyote). Even though Jamie doesn’t wear makeup and only owns one sweater, Landon falls in love with her. Too bad she’s dying.
A Walk To Remember is a movie that I can remember walking down to the movie theater to see with my friends. Shane West was so handsome. Mandy Moore was so beautiful, even if she did only own one sweater. The film taught us all that there’s nothing more romantic than falling in love when you only have a year to live. (At least, that’s what it taught us girls. The boys just learned that they could nearly kill someone and their only punishment would be having to appear in a school play.) I loved it when I first saw it and I still enjoyed it when I rewatched it yesterday, even if I now realize that it never made sense that Mandy Moore would only own one sweater. There’s a lot about the movie that doesn’t make any sense but Shane West and Mandy Moore had that irresistible chemistry. Early on, when Jamie warns Landon not to fall in love with her and Landon says it will never happen, that’s when everyone knows that they’re destined to be together.
The movie still made me cry, even though I now know that someone has to die in every Nicholas Sparks story. Getting married right out of high school makes sense when one of you is going to be dead before college reopens for the fall. Did Landon ever remarry? He better not have. I will never forget A Walk To Remember.
Do you remember Swimfan? It originally came out in 2002 and it starred Jesse Bradford, the hot guy from Bring It On, and Erika Christensen, the drug addicted runaway from Traffic. The movie is like a high school version of Fatal Attraction. Jesse swims for the high school swim team. Erika is a psycho stalker who is obsessed with swimmers. Chaos follows.
I was on a high school date when I first saw Swimfan. Fortunately, the movie offered up some very important life lessons.
Probably the film’s most important lesson was that you should always put out because, if you don’t, your dumbass boyfriend is going to end up cheating on you with some psycho bitch who is going to go all obsessive on his ass and end up framing him for murder. When Swimfan starts, Ben (Jesse Bradford!) is dating Amy (Shiri Appleby) and they’re a cute couple but Amy is more into studying and planning for the future than in having sex with Ben.
So, of course, Ben ends up cheating on her with the new girl at school, Madison Bell (Erika Christensen). He does this despite the fact that Madison is obviously unbalanced from the minute that he meets her, has a major case of the crazy eyes, and tends to come across as being a little bit robotic. It’s only one night and Ben says that he feels terrible about it but Madison still decides that Ben is her man now.
It all leads to this scene:
(I have to admit that the artful placement of the camera in this scene makes me laugh every time. The filmmakers were obviously really determined to get that PG-13 rating. Also, just a little tip — if you’re taking nudes for your man, try smiling.)
When Ben keeps rejecting her, Madison conspires to get him kicked off the swim team. She also kills the swimmer who takes Ben’s place on the team and frames Ben for the crime. (The exact same thing happened to Michael Phelps but you never hear about it because all the media wants to talk about is that time he got his picture taken at that party.) And then she tries to kill Amy and, the movie tells us, this all could have been avoided if only Amy hadn’t spent so much time worrying about which college to go to. Keep your man happy, girls, the movie tells us, or be prepared to deal with the consequences. Boys will be boys!
The other life lesson is that you should really learn how to swim. Since this movie is called Swimfan and it features a gigantic subplot about swimming, you can already guess that it’s all going to end with a big fight in a pool. Ben can swim. Madison and Amy can’t. Can you guess what happens? Watching Swimfan last night reminded me that I still need to learn how to swim. Thank you, Swimfan!
Anyway, Swimfan is definitely a guilty pleasure. I mean, if you want to get technical about it, this is a really, really bad movie. The plot is derivative of every single stalker thriller that you’ve ever seen. Jesse Bradford is pretty good but Erika Christensen appears to be in a daze. And yet, whenever I see that it’s on, I can’t help but watch it. Some of it, of course, is because Swimfan appeals to the same nostalgia that still causes me to sing …Baby One More Time, at the top of my lungs, whenever I’m driving home despite the fact that Britney’s later songs are so much better. But beyond the nostalgia appeal, Swimfan is just so ludicrous and silly and over the top. How can you not be a fan of Swimfan?
Through the Shattered Lens 