Review: If I Stay flatlines even with Chloe Grace Moretz

EVEN the acting chops of Chloe Grace Moretz can’t save this low-grade weepie film from being a faulty version of The Fault In Our Stars.

If I Stay (M)

Director: R.J. Cutler (The September Issue)

Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Jamie Blackley, Mirielle Enos, Stacy Keach.

Rating: **

Some matters of life and death just won’t matter

You can safely mark down this supremely soppy affair as a faulty version of The Fault In Our Stars: no matter how hard it tries, it just won’t make you cry.

Chloe Grace Moretz plays Mia in If I Stay, a comatose car-crash victim deliberating from inside her big sleep whether to wake up, or turn her toes up.

 As her spirit-self wanders the hospital ward in which she remains on the brink of death, Mia fuzzily flashes back to quality time spent with her hunky high-school ex-boyfriend Adam (Jamie Blackley).

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Flash back ... Chloe Grace Moretz and Jamie Blackley in If I Stay.

 He once sucked a bee-sting right out of her swollen hand. What a prince.

 Sure, Adam and Mia had their differences. He was way into indie rock, while she liked her sounds classically mellow. But Adam did end up giving her a bracelet inscribed with both a guitar and a cello, so that was soon smoothed over.

 Perhaps if Mia chooses to go on living, she might give this dashing dude another night of pashin’ in that old boatshed down by the river?

Chloe Grace Moretz in a scene from If I Stay. Picture: AP/Warner Bros.

 Moretz is one of the finest young actors around right now, but her considerable talent cannot get this flatlining weepie off life-support.

 Then again, even Meryl Streep on super-strength performance steroids would curl up like a dying spider if she had to shoulder some of Moretz’s wonky workload here.

 Scenes where Mia must ethereally stagger towards (and vacantly gaze at) a blinding light at the end of a hospital corridor are as tragicomic as anything you’ll see in cinemas this year.

Fell flat ... Chloe Grace Moretz in If I Stay.

 Any pluses that could possibly cancel out a few of the many cons to this meekly manipulative affair?

 Well, old-timer Stacy Keach gives the whole film a good whack behind the ear with some earthy work as Mia’s grandpa in the final act.

 Oh, and I’m led to believe no bees were harmed in the making of this motion picture.

Originally published as Review: If I Stay flatlines even with Chloe Grace Moretz