Remember Me

This romantic drama stars heartthrob Robert Pattinson (of shrieking teenybopper "Twilight" fame) as a young rebellious college kid who meets and subesequently falls for a pretty young student, played by Emilie de Ravin (from TV's "Lost").  Both stars give pleasantly surprising nuanced performances, giving depth to these two characters who manage to fall in love despite (or maybe because of) the emotional baggage from each of their personal tragedies.  The film does a great job of showcasing deep-rooted feelings of grief and loss and tackling complicated family relationships (an angry son and his distant father, or a repressed daughter and her overprotective father never come off as trite).  Overall, the story - though a little on the histrionic side but not heavy-handed - feels sincere.  That is, until the last 10 mintutes of the film which are so manipulative that you feel cheated of the first 100 minutes you already watched.  Without giving too much away, the ending is just so unecessarily over-the-top when the same effect could have been easily achieved if executed on a much smaller scale.  This would have been a 4-star movie in my book, but I docked it a star for the contrived finale.


3 out of 5 stars