Joel on Film

The third screen adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel in as many years, Reminders of Him aggravates for a lot of the same reasons that those other two were aggravating. First and foremost, it’s quite remarkable how the initially primary and eventually secondary story of this movie is absolutely not a romantic drama, but instead a knotty and emotionally loaded scenario given a modicum of sensitivity and bolstered by a good lead performance. Maika Monroe stars as Kenna Rowan, a young woman with dreams of a cozy life after meeting a nice young man and planning a future with him.

That future was cut short six years before the main events of this story, when Kenna and Scotty (Rudy Pankow) were involved in a single-car accident with devastating consequences: Scotty was killed, and Kenna, after seemingly fleeing the scene, was sentenced to seven years’ incarceration. She was also pregnant, and though the original plan of the courts was to allow a few days with the newborn, the unpredictability of the delivery stole that chance from her. Returning to the small town where she and Scotty lived and dreamed, Kenna is determined to start over—with the first order of business to meet her child.

There is a lot here worth examining and exploring, and for a little while, it’s enough that the material is in the hands of Monroe, a fine actress who calibrates the melodrama driving this role to give us an honest portrayal of the post-incarceration struggle. Kenna can’t seem to get a job anywhere with a record, finally finding some grace at a grocery store from a nice shift supervisor (played by Lainey Wilson) and, on the weekends, dishwashing work from Ledger (Tyriq Withers). He owns the bar that was once a bookstore, where Kenna and Scotty liked to hang out.

In the first of a series of contrivances, it also turns out that Ledger (whose name, by the way, is such a loaded one that the only response is to roll one’s eyes) was Scotty’s best friend in life, but because his professional-football dreams kept him away from home, he never once met Kenna for the entire duration of her relationship with Scotty. That means Kenna and Ledger’s Meet Cute is based in such tortured dramatic irony—she knows the name and cuts things short before he’s able to learn hers—that it fuels the rest of this similarly tortured affair. If only the word “affair” didn’t turn literal, everything would be just fine.

Unfortunately, because this is a Hoover adaptation (with a screenplay written by the author and Lauren Levine), the priorities are entirely devoted to the romantic entanglement that ensues in all its problematic soapiness. Monroe and Withers are fine enough in their shared chemistry, but one also gets the feeling that both actors seem to know they’re smart enough not to believe the methods of forcing these characters into a will-they-won’t-they scenario. We sort of know they will, removing any of the characteristic tension that arises from the troubled union.

That’s why it’s such a disappointment every time we turn back to this romance and away from the stronger story at the movie’s center. There is a parentless daughter named Diem, who is adorable (and played by Zoe Kosovic, who is adorable), to worry about, and there is also the understandable conflict between Kenna and Scotty’s parents (played by Bradley Whitford and Lauren Graham, both very good), who don’t want their granddaughter consorting with a woman whom they believe abandoned their son to die. That kind of conflict is wholly unforced and based in raw honesty and reaches a touching conclusion without overt or cynical manipulation.

It feels, indeed, like an entirely different movie than the one it’s been shoved into, which is an increasingly frustrating romantic drama that acts as one big, dumb distraction from the point. Maybe it’s a fundamental problem of the source material (unread, to be clear, by me), but whatever the case, it all contributes to the end result of Reminders of Him, a big, sappy mess that didn’t need to be one.

Rating: *½ (out of ****)