This review should probably begin with “spoiler alert” asterisked and proclaimed in big, bold letters as a warning to all the Robert Pattinson fans in our audience, except that we won’t be giving anything away that “Remember Me” doesn’t also reveal in its early moments. The story isn’t coincidentally set in the summer of 2001 in New York City; it uses that very specific time and location to turn what could have been an ineffectual, slightly silly romance into one that jabs into the still festering wound of a national tragedy, poking and prodding to make sure that you feel something, anything, in what is otherwise an emotionless film.
There’s a sloppy sadism to the filmmakers’ technique. All films are manipulative, but a talented screenwriter, director, and actors ensure that you don’t feel pressed into feeling what they want you to feel. A good film slyly points you in the direction its cast and crew want you to go, while a bad one uses brute force to drag you there, leaving no doubt of where you’re headed.
“Remember Me” makes a brief stop in 1991 before it arrives at its destination. Young Ally and her mother (Martha Plimpton) are on a Brooklyn subway platform, but when a mugging turns deadly, Ally is left screaming over her mother’s body. Fast forward a decade, and the film announces that it’s 2001. Ally is all grown up and played by Emilie de Ravin (“Lost”). She’s an NYU student, who lives in Queens with her father, Neil (played by Chris Cooper, making the argument for the career merits of not winning an Oscar) who is also a New York City cop.
Meanwhile, Tyler Keats Hawkins (Pattinson, “Twilight”) still mourns the death of his older brother six years ago. He fills journals with letters to his lost sibling, while he sits in a downtown diner, drinking coffee and twitching. He’s a smirking, smoking, plaid-shirt-wearing douchebag, also known as every father’s worst nightmare. After Sgt. Craig arrests a supposedly innocent (but entirely idiotic) Tyler, the 21-year-old plots his revenge with his even douchier roommate, Aidan (Tate Ellington, “The Invention of Lying”). He’ll seduce Ally just to spite her father, but he unsurprisingly falls in love with her after a sigh-worthy PG-13 sex session inevitably backlit by a golden glow. However, his relationship with his own father (Pierce Brosnan) at once threatens his stability and makes him even more attractive (you know, ’cause angry, damaged boys are H-O-T).
Amidst a fantastic turn-of-the millennium soundtrack (Ed Harcourt, Sigur Ros, The Promise Ring) and cheesy dialogue (“Lucky for you, I’m undecided.” “About what?” “Everything.”), Ally and Tyler have a stomach-churning romance that somehow seems more wrong than a vampire-human coupling. There’s little chemistry between de Ravin and Pattinson, and there’s no reason they should even like each other. However, his Tyler is wounded and pretty (I guess), and she’s the type of quirky that hopefully only exists in movies. She dumps pasta water on Tyler as a method of seduction, and she eats her dessert first because life is just that short.
Unsubtle hints at the impending tragedy pepper the film, from a lecture on the ethics of terrorism to morose music in what should be an otherwise happy scene. The ending is less of a surprise than early press hinted, since we’re fully aware of the film’s setting, but that doesn’t make it any less cheap or exploitative. “Remember Me” feels and looks like a film project from the pretentious college student whose voice and opinions you dreaded in philosophy class, but its pedigree isn’t as bad as it could be. Director Allen Coulter worked in TV before directing the not-awful “Hollywoodland”, but that film’s style is absent here, alternately replaced by an overeager attempt at arty shots (like the camera’s focus on a cowboy hat crushed on the New York street) and unimaginative ones. The screenplay arrives from newcomer Will Fetters, and it feels like a first effort in the worst of ways, with bad dialogue and poorly crafted characters. All the men (Tyler included) come across like assholes, and all the women (from saintly Ally to Tyler’s mother and sister) are flawless and boring.
British actor Pattinson has mastered an American accent, but he should focus on actually acting. Squinting does not count. De Ravin is harmless, while her talented costars (Brosnan, Cooper, and Lena Olin) feel like they belong in a different, better film, a film that we’d much rather be watching. [D]