Reminders of Him Review
Reminders of Him might not flirt with anything remotely close to fresh or new, but it is perfectly serviceable as a heady romantic drama with a definite Nicholas Sparks vibe.
Kenna (Maika Monroe) returns to her hometown after 7 years in prison for accidentally killing her boyfriend in a car accident. The daughter she had in prison, her late boyfriends, has grown up with her custodial grandparents - Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford) - who now refuse to let Kenna see her. They live across from Ledger Ward (Tyriq Withers), the best friend of the late boyfriend, who is now somewhat of a father figure in her daughter’s life. As Kenna fights to make her life again, she and Ledger grow closer, not realising the connection they already have in Kenna’s fatal mistake, and in her lost daughter.
Reminders of Him joins a handful of films from the same author - It Ends With Us and Regretting You particularly. And there’s something about this adaptation that leans heavily into the mid-2000s to early 2010s vibes and sets it apart. It never feels particularly fresh, but it also never feels too schmalzy. For many reasons, it probably sits between those two prior movies in terms of quality, but it does stand out in one particular area.
That area is plot. The film has a deeply complex and moving story at its backbone. Colleen Hoover writes stories of unique complexity with characters who seem trapped in by an unending stream of bad luck, and our lead Kenna Rowan is one such character. The deep complexity of the situation that not just Kenna, but Ledger and Grace find themselves in, gives this film a far greater quality of story and emotion than it deserves, and far greater than the prior two adaptations.
At times, the acting is poor. There’s a lot of heavy breathing used to convey everything from emotion to desire. Maika Monroe never really captures the energy of the character, and Lauren Graham doesn’t hit. Tyriq Withers is strong in moments, but even he can’t seem to bring the energy that is needed to scenes where, say, Kenna and Ledger are meant to be mad at each other. It is all curiously muted.
And that’s where the complexity of the story comes in, because these characters who should be feeling a lot of emotions and don’t seem to be showing them in the performance, are instead aided by the sheer nuance of the circumstances they are in. As an audience, we can feel from every side a sense of right. There are no real villains here, and director Vanessa Caswill avoids painting anyone with too broad a brush. Sure, there could have been more exploration and a better storytelling exemplified, but the concept is so strong that we paint in the gaps from our seat in the cinema. For a movie as threadbare as this, that is kind of enough.
Outside of that, there are a handful of really nice visual moments, and the occasional burst of frission as our two leads fall into a forbidden romance. But ultimately, this is a movie that comes and goes in an instant; easy to watch, a coin flip between a roll of the eyes and deep immersion, and in the end, one you’ll likely forget, going away just as easily as it went down.
