It takes all of about forty-five seconds for "If I Stay" to paraphrase in voiceover the John Lennon lyric, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Granted, this is not the most original way to start a film, but its sentiment is very much in line with a teen drama about facing one's mortality. A mostly faithful, if slightly homogenized, adaptation of Gayle Forman's best-selling 2009 YA novel, "If I Stay" has a number of similarities with 2007's underappreciated "The Invisible" (itself a U.S. remake of 2002 Swedish feature "Den Osynlige"), not the least being their shared premise of a high-schooler's out-of-body experience as his or her life hangs in the balance. In helming a picture that relies on a flashback structure, director R.J. Cutler (a documentary filmmaker making his fictional feature debut) doesn't stick every transitional landing, but when he gets it right he hits just the correct emotional sweet spot. Likewise, scribe Shauna Cross (2009's "Whip It") occasionally overwrites for her characters, and unfortunately some rather cheesy lines sneak through the cracks. The crucial choice which protagonist Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) faces, however, is loaded with truth, suggestion and consequence. Here is a story that, not unlike 2014's "The Fault in Our Stars," is about love and loss without necessarily hedging its bets on whether or not a girl gets a boy.
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