REMEMBER ME

Mopey people have mopey romance with mopey film-lighting and mopey soundtrack. Then cheap-shot ending destroys any empathy you may have had for the film.

I couldn't help but walk away from Remember Me thinking that it was a film based on manipulation, in more ways than one. In the same way that the main boy Tyler manipulates and uses his love interest Ally, the film uses some shocking moments to manipulate the audience into more feeling than the film deserves.

The first scene of the film is actually quite powerful. It is 1991 on a train platform in New York City. A young girl (who grows up to be Ally) is with her mom (Martha Plimpton). It is dark out, and the only other people on the deserted platform are a couple of shifty looking young men. Next thing you know, they are ambushing the mother to steal her purse, and almost as an afterthought, they shoot and kill the mother. The scene is chilling, and the film had me at this point.

But almost immediately, Remember Me loses momentum, as it jumps forward ten years when college student Ally (Emilie de Ravin) is picked up by a hot guy named Tyler (Robert Pattinson) from one of her classes. She doesn't realize, of course, that it is a dare from his obnoxious roommate. See, they got involved in an ill-advised, but well-meaning bar fight the night before, and Tyler belligerently shoved a cop. The next day at school, the boys recognize the cop that threw them in the slammer overnight when he drops off his daughter. Ahhh, the roomie proposes: wouldn't it be the perfect revenge for Tyler to date the cop's daughter?

If Ally weren't messed up from witnessing her own mother's murder, Tyler is (of course) messed up as well, dealing with his own family's sadness from the suicide of his adored older brother several years later. His dad (Pierce Brosnan, with a bizarre Brooklyn accent) is a hotshot, super-successful businessman who ignores his remaining kids, while his mom (Lena Olin) with her new husband, does her best to raise Tyler's precocious little sister. Tyler's estrangement from his distant father eats at him, because he can see his dad's same dismissal of his sister, who is craving her father's attention.

So, Ally, who has actually become a strong young woman despite her past, is actually perfect for depressed and angry Tyler, who can't move on without trying to fix things. Surprisingly for Tyler, he actually falls for Ally, but knows that she'll find out about the embarrassing set-up sooner or later.

Robert Pattinson is good at brooding, as we all know from the Twilight films. But he broods a LOT in Remember Me, and the film broods with him. But the brooding is slow and slogging, and it actually takes a while for the audience to even warm up to these sad young lovebirds. Despite their drama, I found that I really didn't care a lot for them.

So when Remember Me throws in its zinger of a twist ending, I felt punched in the stomach... I couldn't believe that the filmmakers dared to go there, pulling out the Ace of Spades of modern plot twists that is guaranteed to get a reaction. It felt cheap and undeserving, and it completely turned me off. And because of this, I walked away from Remember Me only remembering that last part of the film—because frankly, the rest of the movie was almost completely forgettable.