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If I were still a 15 year old girl, Remember Me would have been my kind of film. Brooding, broken boy meets intelligent, quirky girl and they almost immediately fall in love. She moves in with him and he takes care of her, while finding himself healed by her presence in his life. They fight, they make up, and then he dies. Touching, right? Well, not really. While the intentions of freshman screenwriter Will Fetters were certainly ambitious, Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin fail to produce any viable onscreen chemistry, let alone the grand Romeo & Juliet love story the roles demanded. While Allen Coulter has proven successful directing for television (Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under), his inability to pull real emotion from his lead actors shows his inexperience in film. Remember Me is at times smart, at times funny, and at times touching. However, those brief moments are not enough to save it.
Pattinson plays Tyler Hawkins – a young, urban guy who writes in a journal, works in a bookstore, audits university classes because he can’t handle being a real student, and mourns the loss of an older brother who committed suicide. Tyler deals with his grief by sleeping with random women and needlessly jumping into street fights. When he gets lippy with the wrong New York City detective, Tyler gets arrested, and beat up by the police in the process. So it’s logical then that Tyler, whose father is a high-powered Wall Street lawyer who theoretically could sue the trousers off of any lowly paid NYC detective, gets revenge for this brutality the only way he knows how; he starts to date the detective’s daughter. Oh but there’s a twist! He actually likes the girl, so naturally he cooks dinner for her and they end up in the shower.
De Ravin plays Ally Craig, a very normal college student who lives in Queens with her over-protective father. Like Tyler, Ally has also been touched by tragedy – at eleven years old, she witnessed her mother’s murder. After passing out at Tyler’s apartment on their second date, Ally comes home to find her father drunk and worried. He gets angry and slaps her, so she moves out of the house and in with Tyler. While she doesn’t speak with her father, she leaves him messages periodically to let him know that she’s safe and happy. But her father finally locates her, breaks in, and attacks Tyler. After this incident, Tyler reveals to her why he first approached her, she gets angry and leaves him.
Pattinson, best known for his role as cool, aloof vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight Series, bites off more than he can chew with Tyler’s character. You can’t help but get that he’s brooding: he smokes a lot, he writes in a journal, he quotes philosophers, and he doesn’t smile much. But what Pattinson really lacks in the role is the ability to smoothly transition from one emotion to the next. His character’s persona throughout the movie changes with each other character he interacts with. Of those relationships, the only believable interaction comes not between Tyler and Ally, but with the little sister character, Caroline (Ruby Jerins). With Caroline, the audience can believe that he loves her, cares for her, and is protective of her – this is the true love story of the film.
Sadly, there really isn’t much to say about de Ravin. Throughout most of the film, she’s just there. You’ll understand who her character and her purpose. But she fails to illicit an emotional response with her performance. If you compare her to Zooey Deschanel in (500) Days of Summer, for example, you see that de Ravin has a long way to go before she really brings the character of the quirky, romantic lead to life.
While Pattinson’s and de Ravin’s performances fall flat, Remember Me does have some wonderful moments from the supporting characters. Chris Cooper plays his part as Ally’s angry father perfectly. Pierce Brosnan steps out of his James Bond persona (or at least his Bond diction) to play Charles Hawkins, high powered lawyer who shows his love for his family through what he provides for them, and not through the time he spends with them. Tate Ellington brings snippets of comic relief to the film in his role as Tyler’s asshole, but puppy-dog like roommate, Aiden. Some of the best and smartest writing in the film is showcased by Aiden’s quippy dialogue.
The standout performance in the film was that of Jerins, playing Caroline Hawkins. Caroline, like Tyler, lost her eldest brother to suicide, her father generally ignores her, and the girls at school tease her for being “weird” and even go so far as to maliciously cut off her hair at a slumber party. Jerins brings just the right amount of innocence and world-weary poise to the role that makes her character’s feelings both touching and believable.
The problem with Remember Me is not just the limp performances given by Pattinson and de Ravin, the movie seems to jump forward through time without giving the audience time to grasp the emotional growth in their relationship. Just because the characters cuddle a bit on the train or she tackles him on the beach doesn’t automatically translate into everlasting love. But even that misstep in the script was not the real problem here. The sheer amount of drama (or melodrama) that screenwriter Fetters and director Coulter wants the audience to embrace is what ultimately dooms the film. There’s suicide, familial estrangement, murder, more familial estrangement, middle-school Mean Girls-esque torture, police brutality, alcoholism, assault, the typical “you lied to me” fight that movie relationships pride themselves on, and an ending I won’t give away but made me repeat the refrain W.T.F. in my head several times. (You’ve probably already heard about the ending, but really, they HAD to go there?) Sure the ending of the film will evoke an emotional response, but not because you’re invested in the characters or the story.
Had Remember Me been blessed with some solid editing, better acting, more focus, or killed its main character in a different way, it might have been a much better film (possibly even great). Instead it attempted to capitalize on the fame of Robert Pattinson, and billed itself as a much better movie than it actually is. Had Pattinson not had the ability to bring his Twilight fans to the theatres (other 15 year old girls, who will, I’m sure, adore it), this film probably would have gone straight to DVD.
Rating: TWO BONES
Release Date: March 12th, 2010
Rating: PG-13
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Pierce Brosnan, Emilie de Ravin, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin, and Martha Plimpton
Director: Allen Coulter
Writer: Will Fetters
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