If we had not seen The Fault in Our Stars earlier this summer, If I Stay might have seemed more appealing. However, the two plots have a lot in common: teen romance where one dies or lives. It also does not help that the title of the film If I Stay leaves little to the imagination regarding what the movie is about before even seeing the trailer.

Young actors playing Adam (Jamie Blackley) and Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) do offer up some admirable performances that keep one entertained for a short while.  Based on Gayle Forman’s popular book, the movie begins with a horrific accident happening to a whole family while traveling on snowy and slippery roads to a family getaway. 

Mia is soon seen walking around a dreadful crash site and watching as ambulances take family members away.  Fraught with fear, she’s seen roaming the hospital as a spirit of her former self, listening to doctors talk about her family and watching gurneys glide down the halls. She’s worried about her younger brother Teddy (Jakob Davies) and her parents (Mireille Enos, and Joshua Leonard).

As Mia runs from room to room sticking her face right up into the doctors’ faces to ask them if her family is okay or what’s going on and realizing they can’t hear her, it’s frustrating.  The film also jumps back and forth in time to wonderful family scenes in their house where relatives and friends come to sing and laugh and be together and praise Mia for her wonderful talents on the cello. Her grandfather (Stacy Keach) makes a heartfelt visit to her hospital bed that he hopes will have a big impact on whether she lives or dies. Keach is wonderful here.

Not really looking for a love connection, Mia is surprised when she meets Adam and they quickly become a couple, a serious couple. As she progresses with her talents on the cello, Adam’s band becomes more famous. And soon the quandary comes: he’s heading west for a terrific band opportunity, while she has applied to attend Juilliard in New York.

The relationship moves up and down – and things look grim. But as friends and family flock to the hospital after the accident, Mia can see and hear how much she means to Adam. He speaks to her as if he had just kissed her goodbye the night before, and his words seem to assemble into her dreams. But as days pass by, her recovery is doubtful.

Like The Fault in Our Stars, many viewers will find this film to be a tearjerker. For others, it may be a relatively boring movie. I never really felt the anxiety of someone supposedly between life and death. Yet for me, just watching Blakely and Moretz was exciting because they are two new young talents who hopefully will go a long way in films.  I also enjoyed the wonderful cello playing and the music by Adam’s band. 

(Released by New Line Cinema and rated “PG-13” for thematic elements and some sexual material.)

Review also posted at www.reviewexpress.com.