Singer-actress Mandy Moore has a pixie face and sunny naturalness that very nearly triumphs over the weepy material in the teenage soap opera How to Deal.
Unfortunately, the film's many melodramatic twists overwhelm even Moore's good intentions and those of a solid cast.
A better title for the innocuous-sounding How to Deal might have been Two Weddings and a Funeral, for that's what you'll find. But that's not the half of it. How to Deal also deals with teenage pregnancy, parental divorce, marijuana, a car crash, teenage death, the birth of a baby and fears of commitment. In other words, everything a teenager frets about is right here in a film whose undercurrent is "Why does love make people crazy?"
That's the question Moore's Halley Martin tries to answer throughout the movie. Much later, Halley's awkward boyfriend, Macon (Trent Ford), tries to answer it, sort of, when he tells her that love is big and scary, "but it's gonna follow you around like a hungry dog, no matter how far you run." Macon, obviously, is a poet.
Most of the teen crisis issues in Neena Beber's script are handled with a great deal of honesty, although there are too many topics to address by half. Just when you think there couldn't possibly be another crisis in 17-year-old Halley's young life, Beber springs another.
Actually, the first -- the death of a friend -- is not only a surprise, but a welcome change from the film's bland opening scenes. But as the bad karma adds up and up and up, it merely seems like a desperate move by the writer to cover all bases and keep us interested, despite director Clare Kilner's often good intentions.
Halley is a sensitive girl who's trying to figure out how to cope, what with her mother's new divorce from a radio DJ who has abandoned the family for a much younger, flashier woman. Moore finds Halley's insecurities, but also her innate goodness and decency.
Peter Gallagher is amusing as the father trying to hang on to his hipness even though he's well over the hill. Allison Janney (of TV's The West Wing) is wonderfully bittersweet as the jilted mother who tries to put on a bold face while crumbling inside. Alexandra Holden wins sympathy as Halley's pregnant friend who attempts to deal head on with her predicament. Ford, with a bad haircut, is the boyfriend who tries to be cool until he's faced with a situation he cannot deal with. With his uncertainties and missteps, he seems the most real character of all.
But the film is stolen by 79-year-old Nina Foch as Halley's pot-smoking granny, who started taking it for medicinal reasons and hasn't been able to kick the weed since. Foch is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise sodden story, blurting out blunt observations while under the influence and seeing marvelous patterns in everything from shrubs to pieces of cloth. Perhaps they could build a movie around her next year -- senior citizens coping with life.
**1/2
How to Deal
Starring: Mandy Moore, Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher, Trent Ford, Alexandra Holden, Nina Foch, Mary Catherine Garrison, Mackenzie Astin.
Rated: PG-13, contains adult themes, violence, drugs.
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