Good start, but then it gets ruined

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

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

Mandy Moore is still a teenager here, playing Halley Martin. Her parents have split up, her sister is engaged to be married, and overall she has a lot of things to deal with at her young, high-school age. Thus the title "How to Deal" with all those things.Her best friend has a serious boyfriend, they practice unsafe sex and she turns up pregnant right as the new school year is starting. Add to that, her boyfriend is playing soccer and after a good shot he is smiling to her as he falls dead, a victim of a congenital heart problem.Then her dad, a on-air radio personality, decides he has met his new soul-mate and plans to get married.And finally, cute boy at school takes an interest in her and she has to deal with that while dealing with two weddings and her friend about to give birth.This is not a great movie, but it is a cute movie if you like Mandy Moore. I watched it with Natalie on winter break from college. It was a good diversion on a cold day.

This movie is so very real. Real life! Mandy Moore does a good job of playing an angry teen. As you watch it You see things through her eyes. The balance between humor and life's hard times is perfect. I would recommend it. If does deal with issues that are adult or older teen. so PG-13 is a good rating. Again I just want to say how blown away I was by this simple movie. It is so under appreciated and unnoticed. I read the two books it was based on. They are pretty good and also deal with real issues. Some of which are in the film, but the movie blows both books away by far. I love the grandma! Halley (Moore) is not only named after here grandma but has her humor.

I read both "Someone Like You" and "That Summer" and loved them. When I heard that a movie of BOTH novels was going to be made, I was, to say the least, skeptical. I didn't even bother seeing the movie in theatres when it came out.However, I saw the DVD in the library and thought it might be interesting to see how bad it was. But I was surprised when I watched it. There was no feeling of trying to cram both books together, and some characters were blended in a subtle way.It was NOT "That Summer" and "Someone Like You" pushed together, but it was a very entertaining, sweet, dramatic movie. Mandy Moore is a good actress, even though she seems tied to movies made from books (A Walk to Remember). You feel sympathetic to Halley's plight and are torn between wanting everything to work out and everything to stay bad because it's so entertaining.A very good movie, not a traditional chick flick. This seems to be typical of movies made from books. "How to Deal" has depth, humor, drama, and a very fun feel. Definitely check it out!