All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) Reviews

• All the boys love Mandy Lane. But why?

  andrabem2008-09-20

  Before renting "All the boys love Mandy Lane", I saw its trailer in the YouTube to check it out. Good cameras, interesting story and there were some good reviews in IMDb. Well, maybe I was in for a surprise. You never know. So I took the risk and rented the film. But in the first moments of the film, I noticed that this one was not different at all - it was just another brick in the wall. To begin with, apart from the differences of sex and looks there's nothing to really differentiate the characters in this film. Other films are able to provide simple characters (even if one-dimensional ones) with whom we can identify with. This film gives us a very superficial glimpse of the characters, their relationships, conflicts.. What we see in "All the boys love Mandy Lane" is just a bunch of stereotyped American teenagers like we've seen so many times before. And how is Mandy Lane? Mandy Lane, as portrayed by Amber Heard, is just your typical high school girl. There are many girls like her - in any high school there are dozens of Mandy Lanes. Amber Heard has nothing really distinctive about her. She's pretty, that's all. Then, why do all the boys love Mandy Lane? This is a film, that's why. That said, let's go to the film. As you well know, all the guys are mad about Mandy Lane. The boys (with the help of the girls) prepare a party. Mandy Lane is invited to this party. The party is to take place in an isolated ranch. No one had succeeded till now in scoring Mandy. The objective of this party is to ease things out. A girl in the group wants to make it with a guy, there are rivalries, frustrations, and last but not least, there's someone that loves Mandy so much that he/she is ready to kill for her. But make no mistake, anyone will guess from the beginning who the killer is, but prepare yourself for a wild twist that will put everything upside down. If the script had managed to give us flesh and body characters and describe in more detail the relationship among the characters (their emotions, their conflicts...), this film could have been a memorable slasher teen flick. Had the film been done in the right way, there would be in it a growing sense of fear, of encirclement. Conflicts, fights, suspicion, and death advancing on and on.. outside just the empty fields... but the film is unable to build up the suspense. "All the boys love Mandy Lane" is just a passable entertainment and nothing more. If you want to see a film with more substance try "High Tension" (Haute Tension), a very good french slasher flick.

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• Okay, Here's My Analysis of the Ending of Mandy Lane

  omgllc20122013-09-11

  Spoilers..................................... Mandy and Emmett are in on it together at first after the pool party. She is probably 100% into it because Emmett was ostracized when the first jock got killed at the pool party and her looks got her an instant acceptance into popularity. She stayed friends with Emmett on the sly. Emmett is a little more off the deep end than Mandy mentally--she's being wanted and adored and he is shunned. 9 months pass. Prior to reaching the ranch, Mandy and one of the boys stays behind to wait for the ranch hand to pick them up because the rich girl doesn't want to drive over a cattle guard. When the very adult ranch hand appears in the jeep after the boy makes his move, there is a change in Mandy's expression--starstruck would be a good description. She'd been dealing with boys, so Garth is probably her first experience with a grown male outside of school teachers. When the party arrives at the ranch, there's a slo- mo of Mandy looking around, almost like she is casing the place. Her bond with Garth hasn't formed yet, so she is still team Emmett. Up to when Garth is shot by Emmett, Mandy's hands, if not conscience, is clean. She stays in the main ranch house to patch up Garth. Red and Chloe make a run for it. Mandy's administrations have a definite sexual overtone, all on her part. You can see her alliances shifting; Garth has obviously not been included in the plans. Red gets shot, Chloe runs, finds the bodies like somebody has to in a slasher. Garth tells Mandy his jeep keys are in his cottage and to go get them. While Mandy is getting the keys, she finds a sharp knife with an antler handle on the counter. She takes both. Emmett drives after Chloe through a hay field, obviously capable of running over her but choosing to chase her, cat and mouse style. Mandy sees her, yells for Chloe to run to her and Chloe does. As Mandy hugs Chloe to her, she stabs her fatally with the knife while telling her with real emotion it will all be okay. She hugs Chloe for two reasons: she didn't want to kill her friend so holds her close to soothe her through her death; two, Mandy needs blood on herself so Emmett would believe she killed Garth. The suicide pact probably was real when the two of them cooked it up, but Mandy has changed her mind. Mandy refuses to take the pills that will kill her. She sees Garth stumbling behind Emmett and she cries out for Garth to shoot Emmet. Emmett gets hit, but still has some strength to beat more crap out of Garth until Mandy distracts him and she starts running across a field only to fall into a pit where diseased cattle had been killed (discussed earlier). Emmett still thinks he can persuade Mandy to come back to him, but she beats him to death with probably a leg bone, leaving him with the line "she'd like to finish high school." Clues of Mandy's involvement culminate in her waking up in the kitchen with a streak of blood in her hair as if Emmett had to stroke a strand when he was in the kitchen making the refrigerator magnets line up to spell "Wake Up": not only to wake up from sleeping but that it was time for her to do some of the bloody work-- another reason she chose to kill Chloe over Garth (she needed to have blood on her for when she saw Emmett face to face--it was a bonus for Emmett to see her kill Chloe too). Approaching Garth at the end, Mandy has the knife and there is a brief moment where you might think she's going to finish him off too, but she has chosen him as her man. I'd argue she chose him as soon as she took the truth/dare to go to his cottage and invite him to the party. It isn't exactly a move for a shy, virginal girl to do. It shows her interest in Garth and that she trusts he isn't going to hit on her as every other boy does. She bundles Garth, alive, into the jeep, and they drive off into the sunset (?) to one of the many appropriate melancholy remakes of the cheerful hit songs of slasher golden days. Garth is the male figure she wants, not only as a role model, but as the "final bachelor". So sayeth I, who was around in the 1970's to see the original slashers. The twist is killer, haha, but it makes sense when you think about it. Emmett is the willing killer for a warped love. Until this weekend and her encounter with Garth, I don't think Mandy had any sexual feelings at all, other than to repel them. But once Emmett was in full tilt, she was forced to participate. I would almost class Mandy as a suicidal prone person used to being objectified (by peers) and abandoned (she's an orphan). Garth has integrity, maturity, values, and an adult role model with sexually controlled behavior who admires Mandy, particularly at the end when he says she saved them, which gives her more self worth than just her looks. If it lasts, who knows.

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• I struggled with this ... but ending is OK

  sonicred0072010-09-19

  I struggled for most of this film; the archetypes were cliché ridden empty vessels. If Mandy uses her beauty to attract attention that's a hell of a long game and a pointless objective. Why was being an orphan relevant to this script? why was being beautiful such a distraction for a whole school? why was the dowdy aunt even in this film? why did the edgy male in the gang show us he could fire a gun at a clay pigeon? why do whippets and drugs have a five minute high in this film? why do I care about any of the characters? Too much of this film is subjective; some shots are excellent and stylised but the content leaves a lot to be desired; some of the gore is well done; in the q & a on the DVD the lead actress talks about awkwardness in Mandy Lane's character as she took her clothes off to join the group in a lake - I saw a classic playboy disrobe shot of a pretty girl. So much potential was overlooked in the script from a very good premise.

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• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

  rajdoctor2008-06-03

  I saw the trailers of this movie and found the cinematography and what was presented interesting. I saw the IMDb rating and 6.8 confirmed it to be an above average movie. Thus went to see it. The story is about Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) – a beautiful girl in high school who is a subject of male sexual desire. Mandy's friend Emmet's (Michael Welch) provocation to another fellow student to show his love for Mandy, leaves the fellow student drunk and jump down to death. Nine months pass and Mandy is invited for a summer weekend to a secluded ranch by her teenager friends – three girls and three boys go there! There is a security guard Garth (Anson Mount) who works at the ranch. During the first night itself the killings take place – one by one the members of the group are killed. Who is behind the killings? I wont tell here to spoil sports… Did I like the movie? NO. After usual interesting opening – the movie takes a downward turn with every unfolding of event. By half-time when the killer is revealed, one looses all interest in the remaining proceedings. There is a last twist in the tale to shock viewers, but rather it made me shake the head in dis-belief and laugh! All this for suspense? Huh…! Amber Heard acts and plays her role well as a shy and conscious girl – who is aware of her beauty and men's desire for her. The remaining cast are usual – nothing to say about. There are so many movies made of teenager boys and girls going to a secluded place and slowly someone killing them one by one – that it does not interest me anymore. Director Jonathan Levine tries hard to make the movie interesting by using contemporary chat talks of teenagers, loaded with sexual overtones, but does not allow the movie to rise above the mundane. The only and the most appealing saving grace of the movie is its cinematography by Darren Genet – who captures beautiful picture perfect images! (Stars 3 out of 10)

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• A Nutshell Review: All The Boys Love Mandy Lane

  DICK STEEL2008-09-25

  All the boys love Mandy Lane, and the way she is portrayed by Amber Heard, who wouldn't? She's blonde, she's demure, she's so hot that the camera in the movie's introduction to the character, lingered on her T&As. She's a fine athlete though we don't really get to know what kind of graaes she's getting. Every boy in school wants to talk to her, and every one of them wants to get into her pants, earning bragging rights to be the first amongst everyone else to have conquered probably the last bastion of virginity in school. People would do silly things like dying for her too. In typical slasher flick formula, a group of students, Mandy included, organized themselves for a getaway in a secluded ranch, where a ranch hand Garth (Anson Mount) provides that element of question as to who amongst the group will be the hunter, and who will fall as prey. Like how the formula warns against decadent teenage lifestyles, such as the unwritten rules of having the non-virgin being dispatched first and the likes, you're constantly kept guessing as everyone in the group, save for our goody-two-shoes Mandy, get sloshed in a flood of sin, with the smoking of weed, snorting of coke, being highly sexually charged and active, and downing alcohol as if it was water. It does take quite a while for the first person to fall, and you probably won't feel much for the characters that had to kick the bucket in the most violent of deaths, which get shown quite graphically, only to pull back at the last minute through visual tricks and edits the filmmakers use. But for slasher flick fans, it's a long ride to get to this stage, and frankly speaking given that the characters all don't appeal to you (i.e. you couldn't care less if they live or die), the movie does seem to coast along the tried and tested, until its last act. Surprisingly, the narrative decided to reveal its boogeyman quite early on in the film, which provided some perplexing questions. Again for those familiar with the genre, there'll always be a thought niggling in your mind in disbelief that the plot would be so straight forward. Granted as mentioned, the payload comes at the finale, which I thought had two meanings, depending on which concept you subscribe to. First, following reality that the most perverse amongst us tend to be the one most disconnected, and second, punishment coming from someone who doesn't see eye to eye on immoral lifestyles, and want to put a deadly stop to it. I did see the revelation coming, but for the longest time had decided not to believe my gut feeling in the hopes that it would develop into something that will genuinely blow my mind. It's not perfect, but it did have its moments with the following of recent trends in the slasher genre that bad guys don't have to necessarily finish last. Nothing fanciful here, but it still worked to a certain degree. And kudos to both the casting director in putting Amber Heard in the titular role, and for the actress to pull off one of the more memorable lead characters in such a genre flick.

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