Modestly budgeted, soapy, women-centered dramas have made a comeback at the multiplex, with 2024's "It Ends With Us" and last year's "The Housemaid" proving to be huge hits at a moment when superhero movies sometimes struggle to break even. Out: blasting aliens with lasers and quips. In: heartfelt confessions and steamy bedroom interludes.
After "It Ends With Us" raked in more than $350 million, Hollywood sent up the Bat Signal for Colleen Hoover, the formerly self-published romance novelist who wrote the book upon which it was based and who has become one of the biggest-selling writers alive. "Regretting You," based on another of Ms. Hoover's books, did respectable business last fall; now she has moved into screenwriting and earned a "produced by" credit for the movie version of her novel "Reminders of Him."
She would have been wiser to leave the matter to Hollywood veterans. Set in Laramie, Wyo., "Reminders of Him" opens with the homecoming of winsome young convict Kenna (Maika Monroe), who did a stretch for vehicular manslaughter. The deceased was her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), whom we come to know via a series of flashbacks. Kenna was drunk behind the wheel and also fled the scene of the accident, though she contends she couldn't get anyone to stop and help.
While serving her sentence, Kenna gave birth to Scotty's only child, the adorable, now 5-year-old Diem (Zoe Kosovic), a fizzy little firecracker who is the only source of sparks in this damp and dim movie. Diem, who doesn't remember either of her parents, is faring pretty well, being raised by Scotty's parents (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford) and doted on by Scotty's best friend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers), who lives across the street and spoils her as much as any uncle has ever spoiled a niece.
Ledger now runs a bar in the same space where there was once a bookstore where Kenna and Scotty used to love getting coffee, which provides the sort of dumb coincidence this rusty story needs to creak into action: Kenna walks in to ask for a fancy coffee (again: it's obviously now a bar) and amusing banter ensues as Ledger explains that the bar they are in is a bar. They don’t recognize each other because, while Kenna and Scotty were dating, Scotty’s buddy since boyhood Ledger was off playing for the Denver Broncos. This detail marks Scotty as probably the first man in American history who failed to brag to his girlfriend about his best friend being in the National Football League. (Mr. Withers also played a football star in last year’s “Him.”)
The cute badinage leads, as it usually does in one of Ms. Hoover’s stories, to the sack, but first there’s a bit of a contretemps between the huge, hunky, kind-hearted Ledger and the doe-eyed, down-on-her-luck Kenna. He calls her a “murderer,” which seems a bit harsh (a flashback reveals the car crash was indeed an accident, and Kenna herself could easily have been killed). A couple of scenes later, though, they’re back to flirting heavily again, just as they did over the question of whether a bar is really an ideal place to seek a cold-foam-and-caramel-drizzled Americano.
Ledger is such an idealized, factory-built, romance-novel specimen of manhood that he is more boring than any superhero, and if the bland, monotone Mr. Withers has the physique of an athlete, he also has the acting ability of one. Not only is Ledger 6-foot-5 and rippling with muscles (though a knee injury ended his football career), not only does he already know and love Kenna’s daughter, but he also cries at “The Princess Diaries” and is using his NFL savings to build a gorgeous house in the mountains. The new place practically has a neon sign on the roof reading “Kenna and Diem’s happily-ever-after home.”
The least attentive audience member will spot every lame development from miles away; as directed by Vanessa Caswill from a script by Ms. Hoover and Lauren Levine, the movie offers no real tension, no suspense, no twists -- just googly eyed dates and an utterly contrived subplot. The phony tension derives from Diem’s custodial grandparents refusing to let Kenna meet her own child. Apparently they plan to keep this up forever.
This stance, which even yields a restraining order against Kenna, seems somewhere between cruel and outrageous. It is obviously going to dissolve by the end of the movie. But the question of how we get there means everything, and all this straight-line script can devise in terms of motivation is to have characters give up creating fake drama. By the time things get resolved, we’re under attack by an elevator-music cover of Coldplay’s “Yellow.” It’s a fitting way to conclude an experience that’s like being slowly asphyxiated by puffy clouds of baby powder.