Movies

‘If I Stay’ has a weak pulse, barely clings to life

Love that never dies is so two years ago; these days, it’s in-your-face mortality that gets the kids going. Or so the maudlin “If I Stay” is hoping, with its comatose narrator Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) clinging to life while her spirit roams the hospital, thinking mostly about a cute boy (Jamie Blackley).

Pre-accident, Mia is the black sheep of her unconventional, Oregonian family. While her parents (Mireille Enos, Joshua Leonard) are a former riot grrrl and a drummer, she’s a classical-music nerd who lives to play the cello. Her musical passion catches the eye of school hunk Adam (Blackley), a rocker who takes her to the symphony on their first date. Their love spawns a series of diary-worthy voice-overs by Mia, like “Being with Adam was like learning to fly — exciting and scary at the same time.”

But this is mostly flashback, as Mia and her family are in a car crash early on. Wandering the wreckage barefoot, Mia wonders why no one’s talking to her — until she sees herself on a stretcher.

It’s all very “Touched by an Angel,” especially the nurse who leans over to whisper in Mia’s ear, “You control this whole thing, baby. If you live, if you die, it’s all up to you.”

Director R.J. Cutler structures the rest of the film — based on the Gayle Forman novel — as a sort of “This is Your Life,” with Mia sorting through various memories, which tend, teen-girl style, to drift back to Adam: The time he sucked a bee sting out of her hand, the time they did it in the picturesque old boat shed, the time he gave her a bracelet adorned with both a cello and a guitar.

Eventually, their love is tested by rival musical interests: His band regularly takes him on the road, while she hopes to move east to attend Juilliard.

Moretz, fierce in last year’s overly maligned “Carrie,” has little to do here. Her character is so virtuous she’s practically angelic even before she starts seeing the white light at the end of the hospital hallway. Enos and Leonard fare better as her parents, a bohemian pair befuddled by the fact that their kid worships Yo-Yo Ma instead of Yo La Tengo. Blackley is both a decent singer and a respectably dishy love interest.

But compared to another recent teen weepie, “The Fault in Our Stars,” this one comes up wanting. That film’s strong point was the delight its heroine took in detonating romantic clichés; “If I Stay” seems determined to keep them on life support.