Let me be the first to admit something, I love writing reviews of bad movies. It's just so much fun, I don't have to gush over lines I liked, or directing, acting, anything like that. I can just spew out line after line ripping apart what I just saw, or giving colorful metaphors for things I'd rather have done than just watched the film.
Good films, for me at least, are a little trickier to review. If I give too much praise I make it sound better than it is, too little and I don't do it justice. Finding that fine line is hard, but I have to try to find it.
I say all of this, because I am about to write a review for a movie I liked, Robert Pattinson's "Remember Me".
"Remember Me" is a story of a man in his early twenties, and like a lot of men in their twenties he has no idea what he wants to do with his life, his family is torn apart by divorce and his Dad functions as a father merely in name only. Also, his brother killed himself when he was twenty-two, now our protagonist is reaching that ripe age himself.
Along the way he falls in love with a beautiful woman, who happens to be the daughter of the police officer that arrested him. Here there is a sub-plot that I didn't enjoy (the whole, I dare you to date her -that'll learn her father! BS story I've heard before - so ignore that tripe). She is as dysfunctional as he is, having watched her mother be murdered at the age of ten while they waited for the sub in New York City.
Throughout the film they both have their highs and lows, her father is an abusive drunk, but when he's sober he becomes just a scared man, afraid of losing his only thing left in the world he cares about. His father is a workaholic, but loves his family - even if he has no capable way of showing it. His sister is mistreated by her classmates, and he strikes back at them in a interesting fit of rage. Something I'm sure any parent wants to do to the kids bullying their children.
The end is somber, as I knew it would be, but it also felt really exploitative, when I saw what it was I sighed. I mean, it seemed tacked on just to get that final tear jerk out of people. This is unfortunate because it really detracts from the rest of the film, and for what? It just seems like the filmmakers tacked this on because they knew it would hurt a lot of people, people who could relate to that sense of loss. Tacky move on their parts in my opinion, really tacky.
Taking away the trite romance scenes (spaghetti fight, awwwww) dumb sub-plot (didn't they ever see She's All That?) and incredibly tasteless final moments (seriously, it was tasteless) this was actually a good movie. Hard to believe, but it's true.
The directing is done pretty decently, nothing groundbreaking or life changing, but it is done well enough to keep you engaged with the story. Each shot chosen to accentuate the mood by use of lighting and angles.
The acting is incredible here, going in I thought Robert Pattinson would deliver his "Twilight"-esque wooden performance, however here we get to see that he actually has a rather large range of emotions. I grew to like his character a lot, and could associate with how he felt about a lot of things. Emilie de Ravin, his love interest, provides an adequate performance. I didn't believe some of her emotions, but she was a good fit for her character.
The plot, while a bit contrived at times, was still good. Best when it was focusing on the human element to the story, and not the rather uninspired sub-plot. The characters were well written and fleshed out, they felt real, and that is all that matters to me.
All in all I'd say this was pretty good, not fantastic, but what I enjoy more than anything else is believable characters that I can relate to, and I was able to do just that with this film.
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