Reminders of Him: A Review

REMINDERS OF HIM

Apart from Regretting You (known in my family as "the adultery movie"), I am unfamiliar with the works of Colleen Hoover. Therefore, I cannot say if Reminders of Him is a good or bad adaptation. Nor can I say that the original novel is good or bad. I judge only what I see on the screen. Reminders of Him is awful. Sappy and insipid, with almost universally awful performances, Reminders of Him should best be forgotten.

Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) has returned to her hometown of Laramie, Wyoming after being gone for six years. Where was she in those years? Up the river, serving time for vehicular manslaughter. She was in a car accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow). 

Scotty is also her baby daddy. Shortly after his death and her incarceration, Kenna discovers that she got knocked up. She gave birth to her daughter Diem in prison. Diem (Zoe Kosovic), unaware of any of this, has been raised by Scotty's parents Grace (Laura Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford). Diem has also been raised, unofficially, by Scotty's best friend Ledger (Tyriq Withers). He has been devoted to Diem ever since Scotty's death, showering her with all the love and affection any father would have given her.

Let me pause for a moment here to point out that our character's names are Diem and Ledger. I might be the only one who thinks that they are incredibly stupid names. Kenna is barely hanging on in the not-oddball name department. 

Ledger was a Denver Brocos superstar until injuries forced him to leave the NFL. Now, he runs a bar at what used to be Scotty and Kenna's favorite coffeehouse/bookstore hangout. Ledger finds Kenna quite attractive. He also is unaware of who Kenna actually is. Despite being Scotty's BFF, he has seen only a mugshot of Kenna. Kenna, however, realizes who Ledger is when he tells her his name.

Kenna is desperate to see Diem. Grace and Patrick will have none of it. Kenna struggles to find work. Fortunately, grocery store assistant manager Amy Matthews (Lainey Wilson) helps her get a job as a bagger. She also finds an unexpected friend in Lady Diana (Monika Myers), another checkout girl who lives in Kenna's rundown apartment complex and has Down's syndrome.

Ledger struggles with both his growing attraction to Kenna and seeing her as a decent person who made a terrible mistake. Taking pity on her, Ledger gives her a part-time job and does his best to keep Grace and Patrick from finding out about Kenna. Eventually, they do consummate their relationship. The truth about Scotty's accident is revealed. The affair is also discovered. Will everyone be able to heal? Will our poor Diem finally meet her mommy?

Tripe. Reminders of Him is tripe. Do not get me wrong. I could accept some cinematic tripe if the premise or the performances are even halfway decent. Reminders of Him, however, has almost nothing to recommend it. 

As a side note, based just on the plots of both Regretting You and Reminders of Him, Colleen Hoover has an apparent fixation with women getting knocked up, car accidents killing those who knocked up said women and people connected to those killed in said car accidents having sex with each other. Make of that what you will.

Reminders of Him goes beyond the implausible to being ridiculous. Nothing, but nothing will convince me that Ledger had never seen a single photo of Kenna or vice versa. Apparently, Ledger was always too busy with the Denver Broncos to ever meet Scotty's great love. I suppose that Scotty could never text Ledger a photo or selfie of them. I figure that Scotty and Kenna never saw Ledger play on television. Just as Scotty never showed Ledger a single image of Kenna, I suppose that Scotty never showed Kenna a single image of Ledger. I suppose that Kenna was never curious enough to look up Ledger online, with him being a National Football League player. 

I might, might give a bit of leeway that Kenna and Ledger's appearances might have changed in the six years since her incarceration. That, to my mind, is stretching things beyond the plausible. I also know that Reminders of Him follows my Number One Golden Rule of Filmmaking: Something Will Happen if the Plot Requires it To. 

Does the plot, with the screenplay cowritten by Colleen Hoover and Lauren Levine, require that every man Kenna meets fall passionately in love with her? The "meet cute" for Kenna and Scotty is how he keeps buying items at the dollar store she works until she agrees to a date. The "meet cute" for Kenna and Ledger has him all but asking her out when she goes into the bar that first night. Kenna is catnip to all the young, eligible men in this small town. Reminders of Him makes Ledger, quite frankly, into a bit of a stalker.

Somehow, Reminders of Him made almost everyone unlikable, even Diem (which I still think is a simply frightful name). Ledger has no struggles schtupping the woman everyone blames for killing his bestest best friend. Patrick and Grace offer no grace (and part of me thinks that the name choice is meant to be ironic to symbolic). Is Ledger keeping score? Is Diem seizing the opportunity? 

Vanessa Caswill's directing of her actors does not help matters. Tyriq Withers showcased his taut body and no acting range in the horrendous Him. Reminders of Him does less of the former and more of the latter. Tyriq Withers cannot even run the gamut from A to B. It would be an acting miracle if he could show any emotion whatever. He speaks his lines as if almost drugged. No matter what the scene, no matter what the emotion, Withers is consistently comatose. At least he is pretty.

As another side note, I have seen Tyriq Withers in Him and Reminders of Him. Reminders of Him are the last thing that I need while watching Reminders of Him.

Rudy Pankow made Scotty less the lovelorn young man and more the irresponsible dolt who caused his own death. We see in the flashback that he gave Kenna something to make themselves high. As such, she was basically intoxicated thanks to him. While it is terrible that a simple pothole got her to lose control of the vehicle, it did get them to both stop singing Coldplay's Yellow, so there's that.

Both Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham were one note as Patrick and Grace. I think Graham was miscast. She seemed to have only one expression throughout the film. I kept thinking that maybe Marcia Gay Harden would have been better in the role. Whitford, for his part, spoke his lines with slightly more conviction than Withers.

If anything makes Reminders of Him watchable, it is Maika Monroe. It is not a great performance. However, you can see that Monroe is expressing more of Kenna's conflict. She makes Kenna a flawed but basically decent person. Her anger at not being able to see Diem and slight amusement at Lady Diana's constant retort of "Jerk!" to Ledger make her performance one worth watching. She shows Kenna's regrets, hesitancy, doubts, guilt and genuine desire to improve things where she can. Monika Myers is a delight as Lady Diana. There is something amusing about how blunt she is. Lady Diana has no problem walking in and out of Kenna's apartment, nor any problem saying what she thinks. 

Lainey Wilson is mostly known for her country music. Her role in Reminders of Him is small. However, she acquits herself well as Amy, the compassionate assistant manager who wants to help Kenna back on her feet. 

Apart from Maika Monroe and Monika Myers, the only positives in Reminders of Him is the soundtrack. I enjoyed the use of Lord Huron's The Night We Met. I would get the soundtrack, as the film has many good songs. It does go into a bit of a cliche to have a hip soundtrack underscore the mood. However, I like to find some positives in a film, even one as weak as Reminders of Him.

Sappy, silly, but with a couple of good performances, Reminders of Him will pretty much be forgotten by the time the credits start rolling. 

DECISION: D-