I was overdue. The Colleen Hoover train is running at full speed now, as the movie world has decided this is our new Nicholas Sparks. After skipping It Ends With Us (not my type of romantic “fantasy”) and Regretting You (lost in the fall movie glut), Reminders of Him popped up, starring the coolest leading lady, Maika Monroe. Now that I’m on the train, I’m not wishing I got off, but at least I know what kind of a grimy silly mess the movie world has gotten itself onto.
Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) just finished her prison sentence; she was drunkenly driving the car that killed her fiance Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow). She heads back to Wyoming, where her now 5 year old daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic) is being raised by Scotty’s grandparents Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), still convinced Kenna is the devil. While out job hunting, Kenna bumps into Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s best friend, who’s intrigued by her, and maybe could provide Kenna the chance she wants to see the daughter she never has had a chance to know.
Of all the Colleen Hoover premises, Reminders of Him is at least kinda palatable. I get the general idea of her stories: broken people becoming unbroken by sharing and overcoming their brokenness. At least in this one all the characters’ reactions aren’t heinous and understandable: Kenna is a shell of a person, and as such Patrick, Grace, and Ledger would be highly distrusting of the woman who took away someone they love. The Wyoming backdrop is beautiful enough too, and giving Monika Myers a part is a sweet new take on the romance best friend. The overqualified actors do their best to sell Hoover’s tale too: Maika Monroe really plays Kenna inwardly tormented, but outwardly barely a person; you feel someone’s underneath desiring to come out, but too ashamed to do so.
But the writing is, um, manufactured to try to swoon the audience. You should read that as forcing it down your throat, so sometimes it’s just hilariously bad. If someone came up to me and said “what’s your trauma” I think I would roll my eyes and walk away. During a steamy sequence one character, clearly dubbed, says, “you smell like apples”, which are never eaten anywhere in the movie: I burst out laughing when I shoulda been getting hot & heavy. My personal nails on a chalkboard is when someone flips a line, thinking its ultra profound. At one point Kenna goes “I should probably leave,” at which point Ledger says “You should probably stay.” AWWWWWW, right? Bleh. The only time lines like that work are when the good actors give them nuance, like Lauren Graham opening herself up to Maika Monroe about Diem, or Maika Monroe expressing why Kenna wants to see Diem so badly, but those are rarer and usually get swallowed up by Hoover’s overwhelming desire to make the audience fall in love over anything else.
One down, probably 5-10 more to go! I’ll be ready for Verity in the fall starring Anne Hathaway. At least now I know what I’m in for, hoping for the best, but expecting perhaps the worst, sadly. Anyways, what’s your trauma?