i must have seen a different film!!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

There is no sex scene. The actors did not show enough emotion to the scenes, especially when tragedy took place.

Halley Martin (Mandy Moore) is a high school student disillusioned with love. She rolls her eyes at her sister Ashley getting married. Her mother Lydia (Allison Janney) is unhappily divorced from her DJ father (Peter Gallagher) who is getting remarried. Her best friend Scarlett Smith (Alexandra Holden) is happily in love until her boyfriend Michael suddenly dies. She's reluctantly to love until Macon Forrester (Trent Ford) finally breaks down her defenses. Scarlett finds out that she's pregnant. Lydia starts dating Steve Beckwith (Dylan Baker).This starts off as a pretty lame teen rom-com. When it takes an unexpected turn, the movie feels like it's ready to make a honest effort. It keeps trying but the lame teen rom-com continues to reappear. Trent Ford is not capable enough to be the lead. Mandy Moore needs a better partner who is deeper than some floppy hair. It's a struggle between a quirky indie and a more traditional teen movie. There is enough to make a passable movie. Allison Janney is a fun presence. The movie takes a few too many melodramatic turns. It doesn't all work but enough of it does.

One of my friends had once rented this movie but I refused to watch it. I saw it and thought it was another cheesy teen love movie. and then not a dew days ago It came on TV and I happen to start watching it( right in the middle) with out knowing what I was watching. I loved it. There is nothing dishonest about this movie. The girl Halley is forced to face what a lot of teens are. But unlike some other Hollywood movie, Its not made cheesy or over dramatized. It is real. The truth. It wasn't a shocking hard movie about a girl who gets all the bad cards in life but it was a movie about things that happen everyday in people's lives that might not be so pleasant. I really liked the Character of Macon. He was funny and seemed to be unlike the person he looked like on the cover. So If you haven't seen it. Its not a cheesy teen romance movie. Its a good movie to watch and love.

I would highly recommend How To Deal. Combining Sarah Dessen's two brilliant novels, (Someone Like You and That Summer) Mandy Moore and Trent Ford as Haley Martin and Macon Forrester deliver a wonderful, creative, and believable story. The plot incorporates the novels together beautifully,without venturing drastically from the books. It is very rare to find a movie that can live up to it's book and especially one that is made from two but How To Deal does this amazingly well. It is refreshing to see such real teenage problems put onto screen without clichéd humor or ridicule's plots. The acting in this movie was decent at the very least, Nina Foch provides comic humor as the grandmother and Mandy Moore plays a perfect Haley. As far as Mandy Moore is concerned this is diffenatley one of her better films.