Colleen Hoover’s claim to fame is a slew of novels that have achieved widespread sales success at Barnes & Noble and an audience with a taste for reality television in literary form. Her leap into film production has introduced a whole new audience to her work. And for those aware of Hoover’s notorious soapiness and her frightening screenwriting debut, “Reminders of Him” had a lot of bad expectations to meet.
To the disappointment of the 20 people in the Folino Theater early screening with me, the film doesn’t offer much to laugh at. In fact, it is just effective enough that laughing might have come across as insensitive. “Reminders of Him” isn’t good, but it also isn’t bad — at least with the bar Hoover has set with her past filmography.
Like much of Hoover’s work, “Regretting You” was heavily criticized for its insensitive and rushed approach to its delicate subject matter. Hoover seemed to take the necessary precautions to ensure that “Reminders of Him” didn’t fall victim to the same fate.
The film tells the story of the wayward Kenna (Maika Monroe), who has been incarcerated for the vehicular manslaughter of her fiancé, and wants to finally meet her daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic). Unfortunately, Diem is in the custody of Kenna’s unforgiving in-laws and her late husband’s friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers). The plot’s premise makes it easy to milk emotion from the audience, and it seems much of the marketing was counting on this. The trailer told much of the story; all the audience had to do was decide to buy a ticket and sit through it for two hours.
Even though they were low-hanging fruit, the sentimental beats hit, mostly to the credit of Coldplay’s “Yellow” (played three times) and the leads, who handle the emotion with care. Tyriq Withers steps into the charming role of Ledger, a close family friend of Kenna’s in-laws. He’s more fleshed out than the average love interest.
Maika Monroe has an undeniable star quality that even had me rooting for Kenna, a “homie-hopper” whose biggest personality quirk was her dislike of music. The character has her flaws — like the occasional life-altering DUI — but Monroe portrays her struggles with grace, leaving the audience wondering: Is this woman fit for motherhood?
Despite this being the central question of the film, there isn’t much standing in Kenna’s way of motherhood besides her two wrinkled in-laws and Ledger’s rippling biceps holding her back.
Where the film leaves room to dwell on the emotional beats, it cuts out anything that would make the plot particularly interesting for the audience or challenging for the characters. The futile attempt at creating stakes comes in the form of a restraining order, and the secrecy of the two leads’ budding relationship. And while they face no shortage of deep issues, such as grief, guilt, forgiveness and complicated family dynamics, not a single theme feels thoroughly explored by the time the credits roll.
The film seems more hellbent on using the themes as emotional tools rather than bringing anything new to their portrayal.
Beyond that, it feels like the only chance the characters get to express their emotions is with each other. Between their agendas of running Ledger’s restaurant, winning custody of Kenna’s daughter and developing enough chemistry to warrant a steamy “we shouldn’t be doing this” kiss, their moments of sharing personal details feel more like exposition dumps than getting to know each other. They ignore a whole cast of friends that would’ve happily listened to the exposition if their characters hadn’t been scrubbed from the screenplay by the midpoint.
The exposition necessary to warrant such dramatic endings is usually what book-to-film adaptations struggle with most, given limited runtime to portray hundreds of pages of character background. The film’s depiction of grief is highly contingent on how we feel about Kenna’s deceased fiancé, and the most we get of him until the very last stretch is the letters Kenna writes to him and brief flashbacks of their romance.
The only scene that evokes any emotion from their relationship comes towards the end of the film, where we see the car crash that the entire movie has alluded to. It’s sad in the same way that those high school car-crash stunts we were shown to prevent drunk driving were sad. But the scene is placed at a point where we’re already supposed to be rooting for Kenna’s relationship with Ledger. It certainly put us in Kenna’s position of indecision, but it would’ve been more effective if placed earlier in the film.
And finally, the biggest question that Colleen Hoover dared to ask: how can we make our leading lady horny with everything else going on?
It was in moments of sweeping emotion that the audience finally got what they came for. But between all the grieving and custody battles, most of the romantic moments were permeated by distraction. It’s what I imagine new parents feel like trying to have sex at an appropriate decibel level after their children have been put to bed. Still, Monroe and Withers have undeniable on-screen chemistry that left the audience members to my right and left giggling.
“Reminders of Him” does its job, but don’t expect anything beyond the emotion evoked from the constant chorus of “Yellow” by Coldplay.
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