Watch a clip from the film "If I Stay," starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Mireille Enos, and Jamie Blackley. Photo/Video: Warner Bros. 
 
 The dairy industry doesn't have a monopoly on milking machines. "If I Stay" tries to squeeze every last drop of feeling from the plight of its teenage heroine. A gifted musician with nurturing parents, Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) finds herself caught in limbo between life and death after surviving, although barely, a terrible crash on a snow-covered Oregon highway during a family outing. Surveying the accident scene as an ethereal wraith, she can see the loved ones she has lost. She can also see her own shattered body, first by the side of the road and then in a coma in the intensive-care unit of a Portland hospital. What she must decide now, in the face of her loss, is whether to stay among the living. What young audiences will decide soon is whether the movie's many moments of genuine sweetness and affecting tenderness can survive the persistent silliness of Mia's out-of-body excursions. 
 
 She is a busybody wraith, chasing around the hospital to keep tabs on herself, her friends and her extended family while the narrative suffers frequent, spasmodic flashbacks to the life she may be leaving. The supernatural element came straight from the book, the popular young-adult novel of the same name by Gayle Forman, and disembodied heroes or heroines have figured in successful screen entertainments from "Topper" through "Beetlejuice" to "Ghost." But serious drama is trickier, as witness the unlovely fate of Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones." What works for readers, left free to produce their own versions of fantasy devices, can be gigglesome for audiences confronted with a film's prefab literalism. 
 
 At its best, "If I Stay" evokes the primacy of friendship, the warmth of family—Mireille Enos and Joshua Leonard play Mia's lively ex-hippie parents—and the urgency of adolescent love: Jamie Blackley as Adam, Mia's boyfriend, has some of the film's stronger scenes. (The strongest may be a heartfelt speech by that old pro Stacy Keach, who plays Mia's grandfather.) But the production as a whole is awfully clumsy, and Ms. Moretz, who is only 17, needs more help than she gets from the first-time feature director, R.J. Cutler. So does Mia stay or go? Let's just say that she's a child of her generation, with an unshakable sense of empowerment. Never mind what God or random chance may have in store for her. "I'm running the show," she declares toward the end. Deathless words from a near-death decider. 
 
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 'Spirited Away' (2001) 
 
 Hayao Miyazaki's animated masterpiece certainly qualifies as a ghost story, but it's also a coming-of-age story in which a girl takes refuge in her fantasies and emerges from them a stronger person. The 10-year-old heroine, Chihiro, finds herself alone after her parents make memorable pigs of themselves at an abandoned restaurant, and forges a new life for herself in a glittering, steaming hot-springs resort where spirits of every shape, disposition and composition—good and evil, opaque and transparent—come to refresh themselves. A must-see for film lovers of all ages. ||||| Viewers who luxuriated in a good cry after “The Fault in Our Stars” may be gratified to know that it’s not time to stop sobbing. The perfect bookend to a tear-stained summer, “If I Stay” has arrived in theaters with the same good taste, modest cool factor and shameless tear-jerking that made its predecessor such a multi-hankie hit. 
 
 “If I Stay,” which was adapted by R.J. Cutler (“A Perfect Candidate,” “The September Issue”) from Gayle Forman’s novel, hews largely to the same formula as “The Fault in Our Stars”: An attractive young couple grapples with first love and looming mortality against a scenic backdrop, the mechanics of sexual awakenings safely couched in soft-focus ellipses (“Adam, I’ve never . . . ”). As in “The Fault in Our Stars,” this story is told from the point of view of an exceptionally self-aware young woman staring down impending death. Here, though, she’s anxiously watching over herself as she lies in a coma, trying to decide whether life is still worth living after nearly losing it and everything else in a horrifying car crash. 
 
 It’s a maudlin, potentially mawkish setup, but first-time feature director Cutler and his screenwriter, Shauna Cross, put an amber glow on even the toughest aspects of a story in which everything is just about perfect (until it most decidedly isn’t). Chloe Grace Moretz plays Mia Hall, a 17-year-old cello prodigy whose happy, laid-back life with her former punk-rocker parents is upended when she meets a handsome guitarist named Adam (Jamie Blackley). Their mildly piquant romance — she idolizes Yo-Yo Ma, he’s more of a Ramones guy — is of the classic opposites-attract variety, spiced by dashes of O. Henry’s lyrical irony. At a Halloween party, eager to please each other, she dons a platinum wig as Debbie Harry and he comes dressed as Beethoven. 
 
 It’s all played for minimum dramatic tension and maximum aestheticized wish fulfillment, heightened by Cutler’s tendency to film everything slightly out of focus and Cross’s to write fuzzy-wuzzy dialogue like “Adam, that song was great.” Even more idealized is Mia’s family, headed by a mom and dad who clearly trained at the Pitchfork School for Cool Hipster Parenting. Played with warmth and easy understatement by Mireille Enos and Joshua Leonard, Mia’s ’rents casually name-check Iggy Pop and Kim Gordon as they roam around their brightly painted Portland bungalow, bedecked with the requisite number of cred-signifying posters and musical detritus. It’s all too flawless to be believed — we never see Mia argue with her parents, much less with her Alice Cooper-quoting little brother — but the colorful, cozy domestic portrait makes it that much more unsettling when, on a snowy road one day, it all comes to a shatteringly violent end. 
 
 “If I Stay” toggles between two worlds: Mia’s desperate, barefooted sojourn at the hospital and flashbacks to the life she may or may not decide to leave behind. Although the emotionalism begins to drag the narrative down as her anguished vigil goes on and on and on, Cutler smoothly navigates Mia’s double-sided experience, albeit in a way that recalls the “Nashville” episodes he has directed more than the ethereal otherworldliness of, say, “The Lovely Bones.” 
 
 Moretz, best known for her spiky, moodily effective turns in such tough films as “Kick-Ass” and “Let Me In,” submerges her most interesting contours in service to a blandly edge-free character. Blackley is slightly more convincing as the sweaty, discreetly pierced frontman of an on-the-rise, safely pseudo hard-rockin’ band. 
 
 Granted, the group isn’t channeling Joey Ramone as much as Clear Channel’s pop heartthrob du jour. But the musical sequences — including an impromptu Smashing Pumpkins jam in Mia’s back yard — bring some welcome verve to talky scenes of soulful heart-to-hearts and teary hand-wringing. Rest assured, there’s plenty of that, too, in “If I Stay.” But even at its most wrenchingly painful, the film readily delivers generous dollops of pleasure. 
 
 ★ ★ ½ 
 
 PG-13. At area theaters. Contains thematic elements, some sexual material and mild profanity. 106 minutes. ||||| Despite the way death and cancer gnaw at "The Fault in Our Stars," the new teenage love story starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort is really about living. Or as Tim McGraw put it in the classic country song, live like you were dying — good advice, since we all are. 
 
 There's plenty of romance too. And for that the timing couldn't be better. We're in the midst of a romantic movie drought — certainly for the teenage crowd — and "Fault" is about as hearts-and-flowers as it gets. There are stolen kisses, longing looks and gauzy montages all set to mood-appropriate alt-rock. Indie "It boy" Ed Sheeran is behind the title track. 
 
 Even though an unhappy ending is a given, "Fault" is no pity party. Pragmatism was part of the appeal of John Green's bestselling novel on which the film is based. Director Josh Boone and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber — the writing pair responsible for the lovely hipster romance "(500) Days of Summer" — stick closely to the story and the sensibility, which should please the book's fans. 
 
 Like its cancer kids, "Fault" has good and bad moments. What sustains the film through the rockier times are its challenging themes, offering real issues for the young protagonists to wrestle with, rather than whether anyone will be carded trying to buy beer. 
 
 Woodley and Elgort play the hand they're dealt well, balancing the sentiment with a good deal of teenage moxie. Make no mistake, "Fault" is a certifiable weepie, but it comes by most of its emotions honestly. Boone uses plausible situations to stir up feelings, without the heart-tugging calculation that brings so many tear-jerkers down. For our doomed young lovers, cancer is just another teenage problem to deal with, no excuse for schmaltz. 
 
 Photos A handful of heart-wrenchers on the silver screen. (By Los Angeles Times Staff) 
 
 Still, 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Woodley) is more aware of death than most. She knows her expiration date is coming soon; the lung disease that's shaped her life and now ties her to an oxygen tank is never stable long. 
 
 The requisite rom-dram "meet sweet" happens at a cancer support group for teens. Good-looking, with an irresistible smile and healthy skepticism, 18-year-old Gus Waters (Elgort) shows up with his best friend Isaac (Nat Wolff). Gus is in remission — it's Isaac's eyes that are under attack. But the disease has taken a bite out of Gus too. The one-time athlete now has a prosthetic leg he's still learning to control. 
 
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 The spark and the snark that pass between Hazel and Gus are immediate and set the tone. 
 
 A stare-down between the teens — Gus amused, Hazel defiant — comes next. They start seriously bonding around the share circle run by slightly older cancer survivor Patrick (Mike Birbiglia) — the endless string of eye-rolling affirmations Patrick offers up and the pair's spirited confrontation on the subject of oblivion seal the deal. They're not so much cynical as realistic. 
 
 Within the typically angst-filled world of a teenager who happens to also have cancer, "Fault" is smarter-than-average as it works its way through one issue after another: first love, first sex, rebellion, identity, the disease, etc. It helps that much of "Fault" turns on Hazel's obsession with a novel about death. Literary underpinnings, even fictitious ones, tend to elevate the debate. 
 
 "An Imperial Affliction," the only book written by a reclusive author, Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe), ends frustratingly mid-sentence. Hazel has written countless letters trying to get the author to tell her how things work out for the surviving characters. A nice way of letting us know Hazel has accepted her own fate, but worries what her death will mean for those left behind. 
 
 Being the perfect boyfriend, Gus tracks down Van Houten to try to get Hazel Grace, as he calls her, the answers. That becomes "The Fault's" engine, one that sends the teens on one of those "last wish" journeys to Amsterdam, to Van Houten's door and through a series of mettle-testing highs and lows. 
 
 Paying attention to what happens in the margins keeps "Fault" from falling completely in the mush pit. Like an ordinary kid, Hazel worries when Gus doesn't text or call after their first date. Gus insists on driving, even though his leg makes it a hazardous affair. They rebel against convention, type-casting and their parents, though with a kind of tenderness that comes in understanding the burden of their illness. And they relate — to the world, their condition and each other — in believable ways. The dialogue is clever without being pretentious. 
 
 This is Boone's second film. His first, "Stuck in Love," starred Greg Kinnear as a writer trying to reassemble his fractured family; it made a brief appearance last year before going to DVD. Though the film didn't always work, what it did exhibit was Boone's light touch with human failings. You can sense an empathy for the capriciousness of life in his work. It softens harsh edges, it brings out a purity of emotions in his actors. "Fault" is better for it. 
 
 Laura Dern is particularly affecting as Frannie, Hazel's mother, trying to live with short-term hope: One more good day. Then another if they're lucky. Humor is woven through, the cancer jokes and blind jokes pointed but not caustic. Wolff provides much of the comic relief — Isaac throwing a trophy-smashing tantrum after a breakup is a good start for an even funnier blind bit to come. They laugh so that you can. 
 
 Elgort is pretty adorable as Gus, the actor exhibiting leading guy potential. The chemistry he and Woodley share seems very organic, some of it no doubt rooted in time spent together on "Divergent," in which he played her brother. Elgort has a very appealing way of making sure Gus' confidence stops just short of cocky.
– If I Stay tells the story of a teen girl with a big future who's nearly killed in a car crash. Informed by out-of-body experiences, she must decide whether to stick around on Earth or head to Heaven. It'll make you cry, but it doesn't offer much otherwise, critics say. (Audiences, however, seem to disagree: 80% like it at Rotten Tomatoes, twice the figure for critics). Some examples: It's up to audiences "whether the movie's many moments of genuine sweetness and affecting tenderness can survive the persistent silliness of Mia's out-of-body excursions," writes Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal. "At its best, If I Stay evokes the primacy of friendship, the warmth of family … and the urgency of adolescent love. But the production as a whole is awfully clumsy." "Full disclosure: I went through half a pack of Kleenex watching If I Stay," writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. "But know this: Those tears are no more honestly earned than if director RJ Cutler had merely been chopping onions in front of me. … The movie is designed not to explore the experience of illness, or first love, or adolescence, but merely to make us swoon, sigh, and sob." The movie "hews largely to the same formula as The Fault in Our Stars," another book-based film dealing with teens facing death, notes Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post. But If I Stay offers "the perfect bookend to a tear-stained summer": "Even at its most wrenchingly painful, the film readily delivers generous dollops of pleasure." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan calls the film "a flat-out, all-in fantasy romance, an unashamed tear-jerker that is unafraid of glossy emotions." Sure, "every moment in If I Stay is not all that it might be"—but when its leads "are looking into each other's eyes, you are not going to care."