Life in a Year

Beware, there are several "10" reviews by people who just recently have established their accounts, most likely studio shills to get the rating up. This is becoming more and more routine on the IMDb. You'd best ignore them.

My greatest disappointment with this film is casting Jaden Smith as the boyfriend. If you do a search on the terms "can't act" you might well get a photo of Jaden Smith. He drags the movie down.

A few years ago he was featured in "After Earth" with his dad, on that role I wrote, "This is a very plain story, and relies on young Jaden Smith to convince us he can carry an action movie. He showed us he can't. He is not a good actor, and he enunciates so poorly that we often had difficulty even understanding what he said."

Other than that it is a decent story, although told many times before, and Cara Delevingne is really good in a challenging role. See the movie if you will, just don't expect too much. It is available FREE on Amazon so you are only out a bit of your time.

I actually enjoyed it. I don't understand all this hate.

The majority of the user reviews focuses on bad acting performances and although the acting performances truly are a great component to the integrity of a movie, it still can not be the main reason to judge whether the movie is good or bad. So first of all the acting sure is not this movie's greatest virtue, but neither it's worst one. Let us just stay with saying that the casting is debatable.

When you read Life in a year's summary of a plot you know exactly what to expect. You know there is going to be a romance between a boy and a dying girl with a sad ending. You know that. You go with that. You are in a mood for that sort of a movie, or you need some low-brain activity relaxation. Movies like that purely entertain and that is great, we need those kinds of movies.

One movie critic once said that romance movies are the hardest to write. Why? Because the audience knows what is going to happen, yet a screenplay writer still has to come up with a script that in some way is going to differ from other romcoms. This movie could not fail more in this aspect. There is nothing wrong with a few cliches in a romantic movie because you expect them. They are comforting, they are relying upon that the audience just excepts them, the audience won't judge them, they just feel them. But if the movie is stringing them up one after the other the outcome is a bad movie.

You have a wild and lively parentless girl Isabelle with a terminal disease, you have Daryn, a nerd kid who needs some unruliness in his life, but his strict and controlling father gets in the way. You have a loving mother who loves and supports her son's romance and sees a bigger picture. You have two friends who help Daryn to reach his goal. Now imagine a plot. Write down scene after scene (some of them look like a music video - you know driving on a road 15 km/h so the actress' hair is not flattering in the wind), add a few cringes. Then you watch Life in a year. You probably guessed the majority of the scenes in this movie. This movie is begging writers for some sort of creativity but it gets none.

I don't seek out romantic movies but wife got to choose. I had no idea what the movie was about so the cancer reveal got my attention and didn't let go. I knew where the movie was probably heading and there were some little twists along the way. Reading most of the negative comments on here I see a lot of people projecting onto the actors or the Smith/Pinkett family and not actually the merits of the film. It was a good watch with a diverse set of characters mirror the real world - not just some WASP pocket of America.

Not sure what all the hate is about! Yeah it's a story about coming of age teens, struggling with life, learning to be themselves and falling in love. And yes... The storyline has been done before and it's been done better, but who cares! This movie has a lot of important lessons about living your dreams, being your authentic self and not being afraid of what other people think. I found all the characters in this film to have depth and I cared about them and that's what I really like from a movie. I have seen some pretty horrid crap movies in my life and this definitely isn't one of them. Sure, it's no Oscar winner, but it made me feel things and that's all I want from a good film sometimes.