The cards in this tale of teen troubles are stacked against the viewers.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published July 17, 2003
[Photos: New Line Cinema]
From left, Allison Janney, Mary Catherine Garrison, Mandy Moore and Nina Foch star in How to Deal. The film seems to bob between melodrama and almost-comedy.
Macon (Trent Ford) is an offbeat classmate of Halley’s (Mandy Moore) who talks like a teenager who has a scriptwriter.
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Teenagers have lots of ways to let parents know that something is wrong in their lives without actually admitting it: falling grades at school, drastic attitude changes and now, any noticeable urge to see Mandy Moore's new movie, How to Deal.
Not that the movie offers any concrete solutions to teen angst, but sometimes it's enough just to know that somebody else out there realizes that such problems exist. Especially when that somebody is a pop idol like Moore, whose first, equally treacly movie, A Walk to Remember, is still cherished by some teenyboppers on Internet bulletin boards.
Few of them ever consider that Moore, a millionaire at age 19 who likely never worries about getting a date, doesn't have a clue about how to deal with a typical adolescence. She can feign understanding in interviews to juice ticket sales, but Moore just doesn't get it.
Neither does her movie. How to Deal tosses out teen crises like so many playing cards, to a laughable extent for anyone who has lived long enough to understand how life operates. Yet the film, with its rudimentary screenplay by Neena Beber, constantly (if unintentionally) trivializes those problems. Instead, it relies on cliches that were getting old when John Hughes realized the limitations of his kid-pandering skills and stopped making films.
Moore plays Halley Martin, a chip off Molly Ringwald's suburban block, displaying smarty-pants rejection of what her parents and classmates want for her. Her mother (Allison Janney) mopes about her former husband (Peter Gallagher) eloping with a younger woman. Halley's best friend, Scarlett (Alexandra Holden), is sexually overactive, and her sister (Mary Catherine Garrison) is marrying a drip. Halley's refusal to be a prom-queen type makes her a bit of an outcast a school. But a similarly offbeat classmate named Macon (Trent Ford) is making those cleverly worded overtures used by teens only when they're supplied by a grownup screenwriter.
So far, so superficial. But it really gets dumb when Scarlett's boyfriend suddenly dies during a soccer game, leaving her pregnant with only Halley for support. Mom meets a goofy vending machine stuffer (Dylan Baker) and starts sneaking out to have sex because, you know, Halley wouldn't understand. Dad announces his engagement on his classic rock radio show before telling Halley, turning the wedding into a ratings stunt with his daughters on the sideline.
Poor Halley. Nobody realizes that she's the smartest person in the movie. But she looks brainy only because Beber and director Clare Kilner make everyone else so dumb. It's easy to deal when the deck is stacked, even this sloppily.
How to Deal begins as a serious, perhaps purposeful melodrama, yet it always seems to be bobbing somewhere just below the surface of comedy. It's not funny enough to laugh about and too hokey to take seriously.
The thing is, with all the problems in this film, Moore acquits herself rather well. How to Deal works better as an audition reel for meatier roles than it does as a movie. Moore gets to show a range of emotions and expressions that, with any luck, will be put to better use someday. She's certainly better than Britney Spears in Crossroads, pouting and prancing, then singing a song like I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman and considering that to be character development.
Moore isn't a girl, not quite an actor, but she could be someday.
How to Deal
Grade: D
Director: Clare Kilner Cast: Mandy Moore, Trent Ford, Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher, Alexandra Holden, Mary Catherine Garrison, Dylan Baker, Nina Foch
Screenplay: Neena Beber, based on novels by Sarah Dessen Rating: PG-13; sexual situations, profanity, drug abuse, mature themes
