Is it worth $10? No

The question of fans following the “Twilight” stars outside of the vampire saga is about to be answered. Kristen Stewart has “The Runaways” (in which she plays rock star Joan Jett) opening nationwide April 9, and this week Robert Pattinson has “Remember Me” in wide release. The box office prospects for each movie are slim, and in the case of “Remember Me,” that’s not going to improve because the movie isn’t very good.

Everything “Remember Me” does well is undone by the cheap and manipulative ending, which is an absolute disgrace. In fact, I’m willing to say this is the single worst ending I’ve ever seen. The ending is so unforgivable that your initial reaction will be to hate the entire movie; in fairness, the last ten minutes do not undo everything the film had done correctly up to that point, which admittedly isn’t much.

After a night on the town, drunken Tyler (Pattinson) and his friend Aidan (Tate Ellington) break up a street fight. When the cops come, Tyler doesn’t like the way Sgt. Neil Craig (Chris Cooper) handles the situation, and Craig beats him up.

As chance would have it, Craig’s daughter Ally (Emilie de Ravin) is in Tyler’s Global Politics class, so for reasons of revenge or spite or whatever Tyler starts dating Ally. Both has an immense amount of personal baggage – her mother was murdered in front of her, he’s distant from his father (Pierce Brosnan) and his brother committed suicide – and yet they fall in love anyway. Their relationship and how it plays out takes on some interesting dynamics, and not everything goes as expected. Credit to writer Will Fetters and director Allen Coulter for keeping this part intriguing. 

A lot of what Pattinson does here is similar to the brooding torment we’re quickly tiring of that he does in the “Twilight” movies. Tyler is unshaven, drinks and smokes too much, slouches and always looks like he smells bad. How Ally finds him attractive I don’t know, especially since she’s a cute little thing with a good head on her shoulders. Maybe she likes vampire movies.

We don’t always buy all the excess drama going on around these characters, and some motivations are left unexplained for no good reason. And then the ending comes and ruins everything. “Remember Me” will be remembered all right, but for all the wrong reasons.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed