'The Dive From Clausen's Pier' is the story of Carrie, a young woman who takes off to New York after her fiancé, Mike Mayor, is paralyzed in a diving accident. Although, the accident isn't the real reason she leaves. Even before the accident, her feelings for Mike were slipping. She does what she feels she has to, to find happiness. The story itself is less than appealing to me, so this obviously isn't my type of movie. But in spite of that, I still managed to enjoy it.
Trachtenberg (Carrie) puts on a surprisingly good performance. Coming into the movie I was honestly expecting her to be the weakest link. On top of her less than stellar performance in EuroTrip, she was also the worst character ever conceived on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But she managed to pull off a wonderful performance, particularly at the beginning of the movie. Will Estes (Mike Mayor) also put on a great performance; they played off of each other really well. In my opinion, Will and Michelle had a lot more chemistry than Michelle and Sean (who plays Killroy). That's where the movie starts slipping a bit, Carrie's relationship with Killroy is a bit unrealistic, not to mention lame. The entire "Killroy hiding something from Carrie" arc was pretty annoying. It's just, after the first 30 minutes, the rest of the movie falls flat for me. I enjoy stories where people are forced to deal with things, not run away from them. Which is why I enjoyed the ending too, but it didn't seem as poignant as it should be. The monologue at the end, which was supposed to be a beautiful sentiment, was actually lame to no end.
Even so, the movie wasn't nearly as horrible as I thought it was going to be. It's above average in terms of TV movies, but that really isn't saying much.
4.5
