Profundity Undeserved?

By Fearless Young Orphan Remember Me (2010) Directed by Allen Coulter

Remember Me received a rating of 28% at rottentomatoes.com.

I’m going to make a strange comparison here, between Remember Me and From Here to Eternity. These are both movies with stories that take place prior to monumental catastrophes: 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, respectively. We as the audience know that the horror is coming but the characters do not, and they’re living their lives and dealing with their personal problems while something monstrous looms on the horizon. That’s probably the point, right? Hell, I could be sitting here right now with something monstrous on my horizon. How would I know?

Remember Me is not as good a film as From Here to Eternity – oh no, not by a mile—but I respect what it tries to do. I’m just not sure director Coulter and writer Will Fetters chose the best way to do it. The last twenty minutes of the film are powerful, as we watch everyone’s life unspool due to a world-shattering event – imagine how much more powerful they might have been if we have been given some characters who really mattered to us, or a story that didn’t feel like the latest regurgitation of the “serious date movie.”

Our main problem is protagonist Tyler (Robert Pattinson) who is a very sulky and angry young man slumming in a crappy apartment while he attends college. We never see him at a real job so we can assume he’s living on his rich parents’ dime. Tyler squints, smokes, and seethes with anger. He had a beloved older brother Michael who committed suicide, and Tyler is the one who found the body. Now, Tyler moves through this movie as if he discovered his poor dead brother within the last few months and is still coping with the trauma of it, but it turns out that Michael’s suicide was actually six years before. No, of course there is no time limit on grief, and finding your brother following his suicide would definitely mess a boy up. But wow, six years later and Tyler’s still no better than this? He’s a walking trainwreck. The only person who doesn’t enrage him is his somber, artistic little sister Caroline who is really far more interesting than Tyler as a character. Tyler likes to start fights and shock people; he seems like a drama queen to me.

Tyler is arrested by Sergeant Craig (the great Chris Cooper) for being an asshole, basically. When Tyler’s roommate Aiden (mostly a very annoying sidekick) finds out that Craig’s daughter attends their college, he pushes Tyler to seduce the girl and then dump her. Tyler reluctantly meets the young woman Ally (Emilie de Ravin) and over a couple of stilted dates they get to know each other. See, you can smell the dumb romance-formula coming right at you. Of course Tyler is going to fall for this girl, of course she is going to find out that initially he approached her because of her father, of course it’s going to make her so angry that she storms out of his life (women in the movies don’t ever give a guy a chance to explain anything), and of course that conflict is going to resolve. I hate this kind of crap, especially since it has to be leached of any real power by making sure that, although his friend Aiden suggested it, Tyler did not approach Ally to meet her and purposely dump her. He approached her to make his friend shut up, saw that she was really cute, and asked her out. If his purpose had truly been to trash her feelings, we would not like him, and the movie doesn’t want that.

Ally has some issues of her own, and seems to cope a little better than Tyler. Her mother was murdered in front of her, ten years before, thus her cop dad is very overprotective and she is a little wary of pain. But she’s not a drama queen like Tyler. Actually she’s nice and friendly, and people seem to like her. Tyler’s family sure does like her. Even Tyler’s dad, who is the pseudo-villain of the film, likes Ally.

Let’s talk about dad. He is powerful rich attorney Charles Hawkins, played by Pierce Brosnan, who kicks butt at playing powerful rich attorneys. This is another character who is a lot more interesting than Tyler. Gosh, that’s troublesome, when subplot characters are more interesting than the guy we have to follow around. Tyler lives in a world of his own pain, hating anybody who doesn’t suffer as much as he does, and when Dad finally calls him on it, I wanted to cheer for the older man.

Tyler and Ally have a romance that moves along perhaps a bit faster than it should when a disagreement between Ally and her father drives her to move in with Tyler after they’ve only been on a few dates. But things work out fairly well and she seems to be good for Mr. Drama Queen, forcing him to smile on occasion and maybe not take himself so seriously. Then there is the pseudo-crisis, which parts them for all of like two days, and then the reconciliation. And then, the horror of 9/11 strikes, and everything changes. Robert Pattinson. Dear me. Well, I’ve never seen him in anything but Harry Potter movies. As men go, this one is way too pretty for my tastes. I like’em quite a bit weirder than this, if ya know what I mean, or at least I like the ones who appear to have something going on in the cranium. No, I have not watched a single Twilight movie, not yet. I’m saving them up for when I can make a marathon out of it. Pattinson is very good at sulking and bitching, and throwing childish tantrums. So maybe he’s very good at playing his sulky, bitchy, tantrum- throwing character. Or maybe not. His acting method seems to be “squint, smoke, seethe, squint, smoke, seethe, kiss Ally.” The only time Pattinson’s acting changes up when he’s with little Caroline, like she brings out a different person. So Pattinson is either a great actor playing a bad character, or he’s a bad actor playing a great character badly. I’m going to be generous and assume that Pattinson is not at fault – he’s portraying exactly what we’re supposed to see. We just, well, hate this guy Tyler.

I can see why this ended up at 28% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m sure a lot of people didn’t know what the hell to think: what is this, a romance or a tribute? Are we allowed to hate it, if it’s about 9/11? I didn’t hate it, though. I’d give it a 70%, or a C-minus for effort. Here are five things to like:

1. Little sister Caroline. This is a child growing up in a broken, mourning family, living in the shadow of an older brother whom she probably barely remembers. She’s bullied at school, she’s tremendously talented, and she’s baffled by her distant, intimidating father. Caroline is played by Ruby Jerins, who does a commendable job.

2. Dad as played by Pierce Brosnan. He owns the role and makes this man hard, damaged, courageous and sympathetic. He lost his oldest son and the pain seems to have pushed him to a dark place that makes him disengage from his remaining children, burying himself in work. What seems to jar him awake is not Tyler’s bitching and whining, but little Caroline being bullied at school. He responds to this like a lion protecting his den.

3. Emilie de Ravin does well with her part as Ally. Like Tyler, Ally is wounded, but she has strengthened in the face of her pain instead of caved under it. She seems to bring that strength with her to other people, and we like her for it. It’s too bad Chris Cooper isn’t allowed to be anything more than stereotypical over-protective dad for her.

4. The script almost makes it into being quite good. It’s not quite there because too much of it is cliché, and some of the dialog is really bad (Aiden’s, for example, as almost everything he says is grating). But during quiet moments when the movie isn’t trying so hard, there are good scenes. Mostly they are when Tyler isn’t whining like a bitch about something, so somebody else can take the lead. 5. Wade past the “serious date movie” to the last twenty or so minutes, which take place on the morning of September 11, 2001. The ominous dread gave me chills. It’s a powerful bit of filmmaking that deserved a better movie prior to it . . . but I respect what they were trying to do. Lives were ended on that day, in many ways. The moral of the story is not so much “make every day count” but that every day does count, already.