Still reeling from a heartbreaking family event and his parents' subsequent divorce, Tyler Hawkins discovers a fresh lease on life when he meets Ally Craig, a gregarious beauty who witnessed her mother's death. But as the couple draws closer, the fallout from their separate tragedies jeopardizes their love.
Critics largely dismissed this romantic drama as overwrought and manipulative, with the screenplay drawing particular fire for its thunderous excess and reliance on grief as shorthand for depth. The film's 9/11 ending proved the sharpest dividing line — a handful of reviewers found genuine feeling in the quieter character moments, while the majority saw the finale as exploitative, borrowing catastrophic weight to lend importance to an otherwise ordinary story. Audience scores sit notably higher than critical ones, suggesting the film connects with viewers on an emotional register that professional critics found unearned.
“The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly.”
Todd McCarthy·Variety
“Allen Coulter directed this morose and sluggish drama, which gets more mileage from Pattinson's anguished profile than from Will Fetters's thunderously overwritten screenplay.”
Andrea Gronvall·The Chicago Reader
“shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people”
Lisa Schwarzbaum·Entertainment Weekly
“There's no shame in exploring tragedy through art. But exploiting it to make your very ordinary movie feel more important? That's another story.”
Elizabeth Weitzman·New York Daily News
“I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Drama, Romance
Still reeling from a heartbreaking family event and his parents' subsequent divorce, Tyler Hawkins discovers a fresh lease on life when he meets Ally Craig, a gregarious beauty who witnessed her mother's death. But as the couple draws closer, the fallout from their separate tragedies jeopardizes their love.
Critics largely dismissed this romantic drama as overwrought and manipulative, with the screenplay drawing particular fire for its thunderous excess and reliance on grief as shorthand for depth. The film's 9/11 ending proved the sharpest dividing line — a handful of reviewers found genuine feeling in the quieter character moments, while the majority saw the finale as exploitative, borrowing catastrophic weight to lend importance to an otherwise ordinary story. Audience scores sit notably higher than critical ones, suggesting the film connects with viewers on an emotional register that professional critics found unearned.
“The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly.”
Todd McCarthy·Variety
“Allen Coulter directed this morose and sluggish drama, which gets more mileage from Pattinson's anguished profile than from Will Fetters's thunderously overwritten screenplay.”
Andrea Gronvall·The Chicago Reader
“shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people”
Lisa Schwarzbaum·Entertainment Weekly
“There's no shame in exploring tragedy through art. But exploiting it to make your very ordinary movie feel more important? That's another story.”
Elizabeth Weitzman·New York Daily News
“I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
Drama, Romance