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ONE LAST THING
Directed by: Alex Steyermark.
Produced by: Joana Vicente, Jason Kliot & Susan A. Stover.
Written by: Barry Stringfellow.
Director of Photography: Christopher Norr.
Edited by: Michael Berenbaum.
Music by: Anton Sanko.
Released by: Magnolia.
Country of Origin: USA. 93 min. Rated: R.
With: Michael Angarano, Cynthia Nixon, Sunny Mabrey, Matt Bush, Gideon Glick, Johnny Messner & Gina Gershon.

During a televised news conference, Dylan (Michael Angarano) is supposed to give a speech about how grateful he is that the charity, United Wish Givers, could convince his football idol, Jason O’Malley, to toss the ball with him. But whether it was the high-grade medical marijuana he smoked beforehand or just his own teenage arrogance, that’s not what he says. Instead, Dylan apologizes to his bemused hero and announces he’s changing his wish into spending a weekend, alone, with the famous model Nikki Sinclair (Sunny Mabrey).

Why a 16-year-old football-playing kid with cancer would be obsessed with a runway model as opposed to, say, a Maxim centerfold girl is beyond me – but this isn’t the last time we’ll be asked to forget reasonable logic. We quickly learn that the Wish Givers’ press conference is watched by the entire North American continent, as every friendly person Dylan encounters on his quest to win Nikki’s heart has seen it, has a photographic memory and is more than eager to facilitate Operation Meet Nikki (who, by the way, turns out to be an alcoholic).

Normally all of this contrivance and cancer would never find its way past the Fox Family Channel, but the bad is balanced out by a surprising amount of good. Dylan’s relationship with his mother, played by Cynthia Nixon with tearjerking gusto, is filled with candor and insight as he and Karen (Nixon) deal with their own pain as much as the other’s. In one intimate moment, a stoned Dylan casually tells her he wants his ashes strewn over his late father’s favorite fishing spot. Karen, realizing her son’s anguish and refraining from revealing too much of her own, tells him it’s the most beautiful idea she’s ever heard.

While Sunny Mabrey (known from XXX) plays Nikki as flatly as a cartoon, the other two leads knock it out of the ballpark. Nixon is touching as Karen, selling her affectionate trademark delivery (snappy but heartfelt) in lines like, “We named him after Dylan Thomas; I used to hate it when people thought he was named after that whiny singer.” And in his first dramatic starring role, Angarano hits the right mark between lightheartedness and melodrama. Dylan’s accessibility lies in his rite of passage, a process accelerated by his urgent need to accept his imminent death. The young, baby-faced actor believably infuses the life of a dying teenager into a film that’s sometimes realistic and wise-cracking but other times ridiculous and overwrought. Zachary Jones
May 5, 2006