A Walk to Remember 2002

At the beginning of ''A Walk to Remember,'' Landon Carter (Shane West), a troubled North Carolina teenager, gathers with a bunch of his beer-drinking, blaspheming buddies for an initiation rite, which goes terribly wrong when another young man jumps off some industrial scaffolding into a shallow river.

For his part in the incident, Landon is sentenced by his school's principal to a term of community service that includes tutoring, custodial work, participation in the school play and falling in love with Jamie Sullivan, a preacher's daughter played with a beatific glow by Mandy Moore, the MTV pop princess.

I'm still not sure what I did wrong, but for some reason I was sentenced to spend 97 minutes in the wholesome purgatory that is ''A Walk to Remember.'' I wish I could say that the experience left me a better person, or that, in the favored idiom of studio publicity copy, it ''changed my life forever,'' but by the end I was tempted to go off in search of some industrial scaffolding and a shallow river of my own.

Directed by Adam Shankman from Nicholas Sparks's inspirational novel, ''A Walk to Remember'' proves that a movie about goodness is not the same thing as a good movie. The story is a cleaned-up version of the John Hughes formula that was mercilessly lampooned in ''Not Another Teen Movie.''

In this case, the misfit girl, Jamie, is shunned not for her weirdness but for simple, earnest goodness. Although Peter Coyote, who plays her widowed father, bears a passing resemblance to the Harry Dean Stanton of the mid-1980's, the Reverend Sullivan hits the Bible, rather than the bottle. Like ''Not Another Teen Movie,'' and unlike Mr. Hughes's films, this one features a token black guy, played by Al Thompson, who says things like ''a brother like me wants to get his freak on'' and ''you're not feeling my hip-hop.''

No indeed. One indication of Landon's reformation is that he tunes out Missy Elliott's naughty ''Get Ur Freak On'' in favor of Christian pop. The movie's deep message seems to be that bad music is good for you. The pivotal moment comes when Ms. Moore, resplendent in crimped hair and a silver gown, belts out an interminable, gooey ballad during the school play.

The movie is not content to make Jamie a good girl; she must be a martyr as well. I don't think I'm spoiling anything. Midway through the movie, Jamie says to Landon, ''I warned you not to fall in love with me.'' (Too late!) This drew a gasp from a young woman behind me at the teenager-packed sneak preview. ''That's it,'' she said to her friends. ''She's sick. She's dying.'' And, sure enough, a few minutes later, Jamie said to Landon: ''I'm sick. I'm dying,'' and the story shifted from ''Pretty in Pink'' to ''Love Story.''

By then the camera had swooped heavenward enough times to hint at the movie's final destination. The audience, however, was stuck here on earth -- which is, come to think of it, the name of another soapy teen romance, with Leelee Sobieski and Chris Klein. God help us.

''A Walk to Remember'' is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Before they learn the error of their ways, Landon and his pals dabble in profanity, and Jamie does, for a moment, bare her left shoulder.
A. O. SCOTT