From the moment Robert Pattinson was cast in the lead role, REMEMBER ME was going to be known as the movie in which he tried to break out of his Twilight mold. Millions of fans around the world were anxious to see if Bob Patty could capitalize on his Twilight fame and establish himself as a real movie star. This makes his decision to do this type of role all the more puzzling as the best way to describe his character is that of a non-sparkly Edward Cullen. REMEMBER ME is overly sappy and tends to drag scenes out, just to make sure the audience knows how much pain the characters are in.
Robert Pattinson is Tyler Hawkins, a young New York college student that can’t seem to get past his brother’s suicide. He takes his anger out on everyone around him, most notably his lawyer father. After a scuffle and a run-in with a grumpy detective, his roommate decides the best revenge is to get Tyler to date the detective’s daughter, Ally (Emilie De Ravin). Of course, as we all know, any time a relationship is founded on a lie, one party is bound to find out about it and thus force the other party to prove their love. This is no different, although the ending does take an unexpected and questionable turn. The one thing about the ending that I can say is when you make that subject matter part of your movie, it tends to overshadow everything else you do. I will also say that the ending was horrible and it’s a crime no one spoke up during the editing process.
Most fans of the film seem to be Rob-sessed fans of Robert Pattinson. That makes sense because in order to enjoy this film, you have to enjoy his screen presence, which I feel needs some work. He has the talent, he just doesn’t know what to do with it. He spends the entire movie bruiting about and staring off in the distance to the point I found myself shouting “make eye contact!” But in his defense, we needed more back-story from him and it would have been nice that rather than opening on Ally as a child, we opened on Tyler as a child so we can set up his character. Ally’s tragedy could have been told by Emilie De Ravin or shown in a quick flashback. Establishing her character early on was unnecessary as the film relied heavily on Tyler’s past, not hers. I did like the board room showdown between Tyler and his father, and it made me feel their relationship should have been explored deeper.
I can’t understand the obsession with Pattinson, but I think obsessed fans of his will appreciate this effort, only because he has so much screen time. The story felt forced and I couldn’t buy into the extreme mental anguish Tyler was feeling, but once I realized Tyler wasn’t going to smile, I settled into the film and it was fine. I don’t think this is the film that will change any naysayer’s opinion of Pattinson, but at least he didn’t sparkle this time.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: The film looked pretty nice and although I’ve been hard on Summit in the past, the majority of this transfer looked sharp.
Audio: This is a very simple audio mix, but the DTS-HD mix sounded great. We didn’t need much from it, but the audio was crystal clear.
Commentary with Robert Pattinson, Emilie De Ravin, Ruby Jenkins and Nicholas Osborne: This commentary is more lighthearted, but again, it features a lot of Robert Pattinson. They really don’t have much to say, but they do what they can and offer enough fun tidbits to make non Twi-hards interested.
Commentary with Allen Coulter: His commentary is more straight forward and he focuses on the making of the film and the technical aspects. It’s a typical director commentary.
I waited for chapter 17 to hear what everyone had to say about the ending and everyone loved it, especially Allen Coulter, who went on and on about the characters and their reactions to the ending. I was hoping at least one of them would say something negative about it, but alas, it didn’t happen.
Making of Remember Me (14:32): This is just a typical making of featurette with everyone, including Robert Pattinson, chiming in on how great the film is and how much they enjoyed making it.
There are also some Previews
