Revisiting Mandy Moore's "How to Deal"
There is a scene in the 2003 teen movie How to Deal that still stands out to me as one of the most romantic scenes ever committed to film, even though it is objectively not that romantic and almost certainly involves trespassing. In the scene, Halley Martin (Mandy Moore) accompanies her new sort-of-boyfriend Macon Forrester (Trent Ford) to a mysterious bridge discovered by his deceased (see, this is already a downer) best friend. They have a little chat, Macon puts on some music but refuses to dance with Halley, and everything is as cheesy as it could possibly be. As it turns out, the bridge abuts a dam, which of course turns on and unleashes a majestic waterfall just in time for these two crazy kids to make out.
A lot of things about this scene are bad - Trent Ford’s suddenly Southern accent, Mandy Moore’s cowl-neck and scarf combo, the idea that going to a dam is this dude’s idea of a hot night out - but that has not stopped me from thinking about it at least once a month for the last 13 years. How come no one’s ever woken me up in the middle of the night to take me to a dam so we can dance to Howlin’ Wolf in the moonlight? How come the stylist at the strip-mall hair salon near my house was unable to replicate Mandy’s hair for me so I could win the heart of my own slacker bad boy? And how come none of my boyfriends have looked like actual male model Trent Ford?
I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, but I do know I can’t be the only woman my age whose mind wanders to Mandy Moore movies when attempting to imagine the most romantic things that could ever happen. Mandy's run of early-2000s teen movies that barely earn their PG-13 ratings is unparalleled. First there was 2002’s A Walk to Remember (actually rated PG!), based on a Nicholas Sparks novel where a good girl rescues the bad boy with nothing but handholding and chaste kisses, then, spoiler alert, dies of cancer. How to Deal followed in 2003, then Chasing Liberty in 2004, where Mandy plays a president’s daughter who falls in love with her own Secret Service agent. (This last one is not to be confused with Katie Holmes’s First Daughter, which is vastly inferior because it does not star Matthew Goode.)
In all of these, Mandy narrowly makes it past second base, but when you’ve never kissed a boy and the most explicit sex scene you’ve ever seen is the one from Titanic, they seem like the height of romance. This was especially true for How to Deal, which in addition to the dam makeout included a montage where Halley and Macon go to an all-night Star Wars marathon, then play with lightsabers on the street. Even now, when I am 29 and unable to stay up past 11 p.m. without the aid of caffeine, this sounds like the greatest date I could ever imagine.
Critics were not kind to How to Deal when it came out, calling it “a hopelessly shallow soap opera” and “the worst episode of Gilmore Girls ever.” I’ve never seen Gilmore Girls so I can’t speak to that point (don’t @ me), but I can say that the teen pregnancy storyline seemed trite even to 16-year-old me, as did the use of “Do You Realize?” to soundtrack a funeral. I also remember my friends and I taking offense to the way the movie altered the plots of two of our favorite Sarah Dessen novels, even though How to Deal had the girl ending up with the guy when the book with Macon in it did not. Still, through some combination of Trent Ford’s man bangs and Mandy Moore’s unimpeachable charm, the movie became one of my favorites and a staple of the sleepover circuit.
Mandy Moore hasn’t ever stopped acting, but she’s never quite replicated the visibility she had back when she was still a teen idol pursuing a pop career. That could change now that she’s back on TV with the much-buzzed-about NBC drama This Is Us, which is already getting great reviews and promising to make you cry all over your sofa blanket. I am obviously going to watch it to support Mandy, but I’m skeptical that it will affect me anywhere near as deeply as How to Deal did, because nothing ever really has. Romance novels with actual sex? Nope. Actual boyfriend writing a poem for me? LOL, no way, that thing was terrible. But Mandy making out with that guy in front of a stupid dam? You bet.
Follow Eliza on Twitter.
You Might Also Like
