How to Deal (2003)

Sometimes life gets turned upside down. And maybe that’s why it’s so hard to believe that anyone, especially 17 year-old Halley Martin, could actually experience that thing called love. The people closest to Halley are in the midst of major upheavals in their love lives. Her mother, Lydia, is embittered by her recently finalized divorce. Her sister, Ashley, is marrying a guy with whom she is constantly fighting. Her best friend, Scarlett, can’t keep her hands off of her first serious boyfriend. Most distressingly for Halley, her father, Len, who is a DJ at a local radio station, combats his midlife crisis with a stereotypically boyish elopement to the station’s much-younger traffic reporter. So how’s Halley supposed to deal? She isn’t about to let herself succumb to the pipe dream of storybook romance, and Macon Forrester is the one guy who challenges her idea that love just complicates a perfectly good friendship. As Halley’s life grows more and more complicated, she finds a friend in Macon, but when she feels herself falling for him, will Halley move beyond her fears and disappointments to experience real love?