I have not read the book “If I Stay” by Gayle Forman, but after seeing the movie, which opened Friday, Aug. 21, I was compelled to put the book on hold at my local library. “If I Stay” has a powerful message and is told via a unique perspective. It managed to make me feel emotional by the end of the movie, despite several missteps along the way.

Mia Hall, a teenager who is gifted at playing the cello, has a great family and a perfect relationship with her boyfriend, Adam. One day, a terrible accident occurs and Mia is left to decide for herself whether she wants to be with her family or with Adam. The movie interweaves fragments of Mia’s life with her family and her moments with Adam, and both help to piece together Mia’s character as well as what her final decision is going to be.

I saw the movie with the intent of seeing a good romance movie, but what I got instead was actually better. “If I Stay” is a good love movie, one that makes you appreciate a lot of the different people in your life. One of the constant themes throughout the movie is sacrificing something that defines you to give someone else opportunities and there are several poignant scenes where pure love seems to flow from the characters.

The music in the movie is pleasant and memorable, particularly the cello scores, but the scenes where it seems magical are few and far between, which is a shame because Mia is so defined by the music.

At the beginning of this review, I mentioned wanting to read the book now that I’ve seen the movie, and this is because I have a feeling the movie skimmed through a lot of parts the book likely used to develop Mia’s character. For instance, we’re shown Mia becoming interested in the cello by randomly and unenthusiastically plucking a cello string and saying, “I want to play.” I felt this scene should have been exuding a sense of wonder, curiosity, and awe, as the cello becomes a huge portion of her life. Instead, it was just a bridge to get the audience from Mia’s childhood to her life as a teenager. There are other moments in the movie where the writers just tell you the way things are instead of showing us why they matter, such as Mia’s struggle to decide which school to go to. These glossing-over scenes disconnect the viewer from the characters, a problem for a film trying to get you emotionally invested in the characters’ lives.

Another weak point of the movie is character development. We are introduced to several characters throughout the movie, and we understand their importance to Mia, but we don’t know them individually. It’s like they exist just for Mia. We don’t really even understand Mia’s motivations and conflicts, due to the omission of scenes like the discovery of the cello mentioned previously. The entire movie places its message above everything else, and while it doesn’t ruin the movie, it does hold it back. “If I Stay” could have been truly remarkable if the characters were fleshed out and some of the message was left for the audience to interpret and speculate about.

The movie would have benefited from more adventurous scenes, such as investigating the hospital. Mia’s friends could have had escapades similar to Harry Potter and company while trying to support Mia. The characters react normally in the hospital around staff that have everything under control, which is realistic, but this is fiction and the suspense and adrenaline would have commanded people’s attention even more.

While “If I Stay” could have been more gripping and deep and it moves too fast, I don’t see how anybody could regret seeing this movie. It has a touching message, an interesting premise, a number of scenes that really impact you emotionally, and the music is pleasant.