Remember Me (2010)
(Netflix Streaming, September 2016) To be entirely honest, I started watching Remember Me knowing where it was headed, and was already predisposed to dismiss its manipulative ways. What I didn’t know is that the film doesn’t just end on a grand melodrama, but begins with one as well as the mother of one of the main characters is senselessly killed in the very first scene. It quickly gets worse, with the introduction of a mopey protagonist who spends his days moaning about his life without appreciating any of the privileges he’s given. With his dead brother, library job, quirky friend and New York City apartment, he practically checks off the grand list of insufferable protagonists. The tone thus having been set, Remember Me remains almost laughable throughout; an exercise is pushing melodrama to the breaking point where the only rational response is to dismiss the entire film as self-indulgent rubbish. Then there’s the climax, which seems overwrought even knowing what’s coming. Robert Pattinson didn’t exactly cover himself with anti-Twilight glory by starring into this film—his sullen persona is well executed but fundamentally irritating, and having more charming actors such as Pierce Brosnan run circles around him (even when nominally portrayed as antagonists) doesn’t help. I’m sure that there is an adoring public for the kind of cheap weepy drama that is Remember Me, but I’m not in that group.