Saturday, March 13, 2010
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
Saturday, March 13, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Remember Me
Forgetting A Bad Film, And
Quickly
Emilie De Ravin and Robert Pattinson in Allen Coulter's
drama "Remember Me".
Summit Entertainment
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Allen Coulter's "Remember Me" is almost instantly forgettable, barring the final
ten minutes that are as exploitative as a game of three card monte. The
film is set in 2001 in New York City, where a combustible, wayward lad named
Tyler (Robert Pattinson) remains deeply hurt from the loss of his older brother
Michael. Tyler's ice-cold father (Pierce Brosnan) is a Wall Street hawk.
Ally (Emilie De Ravin) seems to be the only person that can connect to Tyler,
who has crossed paths with her father (Chris Cooper) once or twice.
The screenplay by Will Fetters consists of lines of dialogue that feel borrowed
and worn from many a movie. One scene evokes a Jason Lee moment from
"Vanilla Sky". Much of Mr. Coulter's film is steeped in pretension.
The main characters are dipped in the yolk of self-importance and
self-absorption. We hardly care about Tyler's predicaments or the others
mired in this drama.
[Please forgive the irrelevant observation: Mr. Pattinson's Tyler has what I've
heard described as "emotional hair". He never seems to have a genuine
bath. Of course, that's his prerogative. The bottom line: the entire
film feels self-worshipping, a paean to Mr. Pattinson's "Twilight" superstardom.
As in, "Remember Me from the Twilight films".]
Had Mr. Pattinson graced the world with this feature film as his debut, he may
have been viewed differently, but after the 'tween phenomenon of the "Twilight"
films he looks in "Remember Me" as if he's posing in agony until he explodes.
Mr. Pattinson is genuinely trying his best but the performance lacks depth.
There's a line Tyler says: "I worry about it too," or words to that effect,
which seem like a wink to Mr. Pattinson's own self-confessed worrying
disposition.
The rest of the time "Remember Me" showcases adults and children shouting at or
hitting each other. Such actions form the general language of the film,
which is shot in brooding, dank and shadowy tones by Jonathan Freeman. Any
romance meant to surface here is raw and unfocused but ultimately lost in a film
where tensions are staged but not sufficiently developed. It's too bad
that Mr. Brosnan, great here and having an excellent 2010 in Summit releases --
"The Ghost Writer" is the other -- is stuck in a
film that hardly deserves his talents. And Mr. Cooper, who's played
indignant characters before, deserves better.
Still, it's those final moments of "Remember Me" that are designed purely as a
manipulative device. Those moments add anger and insult, if anything, to a
film that could and should have amounted to so much more.
With: Lena Olin, Tate Ellington, Ruby Jerins, Gregory Jbara, Caitlin Rund.
"Remember Me" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture
Association Of America for violence, sexual content, language and smoking.
The film's duration is one hour and 53 minutes.
FOLLOW
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.
Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film
Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times -
here
SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE
REVIEWS RSS FEED
PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME