No movie critic was ever going to have excessive hopes for Reminders of Him, the most recent adaptation within the Colleen Hoover cinematic universe, the place disconcertingly engaging individuals in center America discover themselves in ludicrously complicated moral dilemmas that solely work to make them attractive and upset. Nevertheless, one should attempt to reserve judgment till after viewing the ultimate product, particularly when mentioned product stars scream queen Maika Monroe, who has delivered brilliantly layered, offbeat horror performances within the likes of Longlegs, Watcher, and It Follows. And but, my instincts had been proper. Undoubtedly the worst of the Hoover diversifications to this point – following the ill-fated It Ends With Us and the teenybopper Regretting You Reminders of Him is all of the subliminal Christian romance schlock you’d count on with the added harm of Monroe handing over a disappointingly phoned-in efficiency.
Monroe’s Kenna returns to the small Wyoming city she used to name dwelling after being launched from jail – her flat narration reads aloud the letters she writes to her useless boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), who was killed within the automotive accident that despatched Kenna to jail for vehicular manslaughter. Kenna was unknowingly pregnant when the crash occurred, compelled to offer delivery whereas incarcerated and by no means allowed to see her daughter, who now lives with Scotty’s mother and father (Lauren Graham and a really-too-good-to-be-here Bradley Whitford). They nonetheless blame Kenna for his or her son’s demise and proceed to forestall her from seeing her daughter.
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Amongst all that is the hulking, god-like Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a former NFL star turned native bar proprietor, and Scotty’s finest pal who has taken it upon himself to be the pseudo-uncle to Scotty and Kenna’s younger baby, Diem (maybe the couple watched Lifeless Poet’s Society throughout conception?). In fact, Ledger is fated to fall in love with Kenna regardless of their flat chemistry, and he finds himself within the crosshairs of A Very Hoover Scandal.
An outrageous set-up the place the one repay is a bland heterosexual couple finally fucking is Colleen Hoover’s bread and butter. Whereas the story’s idea ought to go away house for extra existential and genuinely compelling conversations round redemption, forgiveness, and the inhumane follow of forcefully eradicating new child infants from incarcerated moms, all of that is simply foreplay for the uninspiring romance between the main couple in Hoover and Lauren Levine’s script.
Rising star Tyriq Withers does a respectable job of the morally conflicted man caught between his sense of responsibility to the perfect pal he failed and a guilt-ridden mom who yearns to fulfill her baby, however Maika Monroe strives for the traumatized self-isolater solely to finish up jarringly lifeless, squandering any of the movie’s probabilities at chemistry or ardour. It’s as if Monroe got here off the Longlegs set onto this movie and determined to stay in character. Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford barely get a look in, however the scenes between Graham and Monroe do supply some semblance of a nuanced emotional drama.
Regardless of the galloping great thing about the Wyoming backdrop, director Vanessa Caswill insists on staging each scene like these uncanny vertical telephone dramas you get marketed on Instagram. These tourism board backdrops, paired with TikTok-trending mushy nation ballads, end in a movie that has no ambition past interesting to BookTok devotees and right-leaning suburban girls who publish on native neighbourhood pages about “suspicious youths” loitering too near their McMansions. Whereas It Ends With Us and Regretting You contained no less than some respectable appearing and manufacturing worth, Reminders of Him is a grim dose of distress and trauma porn punctuated by a horrible lead efficiency and an plain conservative sheen.
