In this era of pinprick voyeurism (could Foucault have ever predicted the nippleslip?), puritans will have you believe that an a-okay on output is the same call on any off-field activity. Everyone else will tell you that we’ve just stopped caring, ‘cos if the price is right, artistic temperament will always dwarf media bait-and-pull: Even R. Kelly – man with the most thinly-veiled designs in music today (hell, in anything today) – is labeled pervert like it’s something that should be written on a tax return (though if persistent mongering leads to more flaming acts of self-martyrdom like Happy People/U Saved Me, that can only be a good thing, right?). So why is it that a professed sweet tooth for teen-girl movies has people looking at me like I deserve to be charged under Megan’s Law?

You could say it’s a case of cutting out the middleman and heading straight to the source, but even then, wouldn’t I be better off lingering outside schools? Besides, it’s clear that looking plain won’t get you anywhere in the grand scheme of bubblegum high – everything’s either gravelly wiener-dog angst or the milky disaffection of some pop starlet. No prizes for guessing where Mandy Moore falls, but at least she’s granted the discerning self-assurance of a virgin-on-the-verge, feigning distress over whether to give the belt-key up to hot boy Trent Ford. And that isn’t the half of it. If the title’s intended to cast an instructional glint over proceedings, then screenwriter Neena Beber has sure as shit seen to it that no one feels left out: Sewing together two Sarah Dessen novels, she’s managed to take on the entire spectrum of human experience – love, death, birth, marriage, divorce, dope-addicted grandmothers (‘cos the kids love that shit!). And of course, it’s all delivered with the strobe-lit emotional cues of life-as-a-trance-anthem, the fulcrum of which is that character behaviour is forced to get down on its knees for narrative needs, rather than the other way round (particularly egregious is the way moments of abuse ebb and flow around Moore’s character, as if their appearance somehow makes her more deserving of first love). But y’know what? With the moment for Ray’s apocalyptic teenage distress-signals having passed, this may be all we (as adolescents) have left: Films that are as messily-designed as their protagonists, and willing to give themselves over to the stupid shit that matters; where, just for a second, the confusion of being alive can be ensnared in a pop song. But just for a second.—David Levinson

» Claire Kilner | USA | 2003