Eighteen-year-old high school student, Hope, appears to accept her fate—the cancer is terminal. Hope’s self-serving attitude allows her to take full advantage of her dying-of-cancer scenario and the empathy/sympathy showered over her. Her mother reinforces that Hope is strong and beautiful.

Hope keeps up her YouTube videos chronicling everyday life, attends her chemo treatments, loves attention, and the overprotective doting.  Hope and her mom travel to Australia on Make a Wish where she meets a great guy, Kai, who applied for “some kind of grant” and came back to the US with them…life is good… Hope’s best friend, Seth, has her best interests at heart and is worried that she gets out of writing school exams because she is the “girl dying of cancer” and he tries to encourage her to study. Mr. Garner, her teacher, tells Hope she is failing every subject and that she needs to apply herself a little bit more. She wonders, why? He says, “Life is about the journey, not the destination.”  Doesn’t she want her journey to be richer?

It all backfires when her doctor happily announces that Hope is in remission! She panics! What about all those skipped classes, the failing grades, the videos about dying? What happens now that she will live? How does she transition from the “dying world” to the living world that has tons of responsibility and no looming expiration date!? 

Hope must face the embarrassing conundrum she’s created for herself by not being honest about her situation and must confess to all her friends and ask forgiveness for withholding the truth, taking advantage of their support, and shirking the responsibilities of life. She admits she has forgotten the important things—family, friends, and facing LIVING!

The Dove Take:

A great family movie that follows a young teen as she learns some hard lessons about living, but through belief in herself, being true to friends and family, she discovers life can be about both, the journey and the destination.