zhcole I really can't even comprehend why you would have a story about a girl dying from cancer and then not only make her completely and utterly boring, but also dislikable. It's one thing to have a character who doesn't particularly do anything to make you like them, but at least is a decent person. But to create a character who frankly is kind of a f***ing b***h and then expect us to have any sort of sympathy for her, is absolutely baffling. For starters, there is nothing interesting about her whatsoever. I'm struggling to think of a character so underdeveloped in a film. Perhaps I missed something while screwing around on my phone during this snoozefest, but I can't recall us ever really learning anything about Tessa. She's kind of just there. And she has cancer. That's pretty much it. I could've forgiven her character for being flat and boring if she were at least a likable person. It would've made me feel sympathy for her, which I feel is kind of the point in a movie about a child dying of cancer. But instead we get a character who is extremely rude to her very caring father, and a character who would rather go shoplifting and steal a stranger's credit card than spend time with her family. Of all the things you could do with a bucket list type story, you have our dying teenager steal cosmetics and credit cards. Are you f***ing kidding me? What a waste of the precious time you have left and what an insult to the people who care about you. Now I don't exactly have any experience when it comes to teenagers dying of cancer, but it seems very unrealistic that they would behave this way. And if I'm wrong and it is in fact realistic, why would you, as the writer of this story, choose to have your character be like that? Why ruin the sympathy for the main character by making her out to be shallow and bratty? So we pretty much just put up with Tessa for an hour and a half and then she finally dies. We get a few brief shots of crying family members, but nothing that really leaves any sort of lasting impact. No aftermath or anything to give us the feeling of grief and mourning that her loved ones would be feeling, again lessening the emotional impact to near nonexistence. The romance aspect, like pretty much everything else in the film, was also very boring and underdeveloped. This was more of a minor issue I had with the story, but why did they decide to throw Teen Mom in there? It just felt so random and out of place and really contributed nothing of value to the plot. I've seen a handful of films like this and I quite liked a few of them, but this one is by far the worst I've seen. Even The Fault in Our Stars, with all of its absurd pretentiousness, had more redeeming qualities than this garbage.

mauler-07163 >>>>Spoilers contained<<<<<I loved this film, but despite it sticking to the book generally, it made it more clichéd and ruined the book's grace in which Tessa takes to dying. In the book, Tessa has such an anger at the world which is different to Ol Parker's adaption. Dakota's accent shocked me at being so accurate and overall her attempt at acting the bitter dying girl was very good. I would've so much preferred the film to stick to the original book as I felt some of the emotion that was conveyed by Tessa in the book was lost. Overall, however, excellent actors working to create a moving film.

phd_travel For those who remember A Walk to Remember this is a more realistic, intelligently scripted and more grown up movie about a girl dying of cancer and finding love before she dies. She has a to do list before she dies. Even though we have seen this kind of story before, it actually is able to avoid having a clichéd feel to it.Production is quite attractive. The filming in the South of England is quite beautiful especially the coastline.Dakota Fanning doesn't try too hard to do a British accent and that's good. She gives more of a approximation of one. Sometimes her words aren't that clear compared to her co-stars. But her acting is good and she looks sickly enough without overdoing it. Jeremy Irvine of War Horse plays her love interest and he is earnest and believable.The father is well played by Paddy Considine and his moments are touching but not sentimental. Olivia Williams plays her mother who surprisingly isn't so hands on with the care.Maybe it isn't such a good thing to encourage shop lifting and drug taking which were on her to do list. But in the end it isn't the main point of the movie.Overall worth a watch. For this kind of dying young movie it's quite good.

Tan Nguyen First of all, don't worry, I won't spoil anything about this film because I'm too lazy to summarise the plot since it has been already summarised by many other reviewers. I have read the book and watched this film twice, and here is my final review on this film: - very well abridged and modified. - very well acted by all actors, especially by Dakota Fanning. I am not British but I am quite familiar with some British accents by watching many British TV series and listening to British youtubers. And as far as I can say, Dakota's British accent seems to be quite flawless. Of course, if you're British, you are welcome to disagree with me.The only minus point: I am still wondering if Olivia's blonde wig was necessary. Or maybe she should have dyed her hair to make it look more natural. But even if those two actors (Olivia and Dakota) had kept their natural hair colours, the film would still have worked because the script was perfectly written.