Remember Me
Time Out New York Project: Issue #754, March 11–17, 2010
★☆☆☆☆
Dir. Allen Coulter. 2010. PG-13. 128mins. Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper.
There’s tons of brooding for your buck in the hilariously earnest Remember Me, which will hopefully be revived several years from now as a beloved midnight movie. Twilight inamorato Robert Pattinson (star and executive producer) confidently sulks his way through this jaw-dropping mix of come-hither stares, “love me, Daddy!” histrionics and historical tragedy.
He’s Tyler Hawkins, a gloomily soulful NYU student at odds with his businessman father (Brosnan), and who cracks Boyz II Men jokes as if he were Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl.” After getting into a street fight, he’s arrested by a policeman (Cooper) who — it just so happens — has a daughter (De Ravin) also enrolled at NYU. One alpha-male bet with his roommate later, Tyler’s on a retributive date…but then love begins to bloom.
Sex is had, past secrets are revealed, but all is not well in Camelot, as director Allen Coulter and writer Will Fetters shamelessly hint via snatches of summer 2001 news broadcasts (it’s a period piece, see) and a telegraphing glimpse at a certain pair of buildings. I can’t say any more beyond telling you that I came out of the screening with an ear-to-ear grin I don’t usually get from even great movies. Bless you R.Patz and Co., because this gloriously steaming pile is officially in the bad-movies-we-love pantheon.—Keith Uhlich
