There is a long, storied history to melodrama that stretches back centuries – “Wuthering Heights,” Douglas Sirk movies, you name it. The definition of melodrama necessitates exaggeration and excitement, sweeping emotions and grand gestures. But I’ve always found that melodrama works best when those emotions are rooted in something a little more grounded. In Sirk’s masterpiece “All That Heaven Allows,” Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) always feels like a real person – her reality may be a heightened one, but it is reality nonetheless.
“Reminders of Him,” Vanessa Caswill’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name, falls neatly into the melodrama category. It’s not nearly as good as something like “All That Heaven Allows,” (truthfully, what is?) but it has a similarly grounded bent. Even if the face of a, frankly, pretty bonkers premise.
We meet Kenna (Maika Monroe), a young woman who just got out of prison – she served time after her fiance Scotty (Rudy Pankow) died in a car crash and she was behind the wheel. While she was in prison, Kenna had Scotty’s baby (inexplicably, this child is named Diem), who then went to live with Scotty’s parents (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford). They hate Kenna, so much so that they refuse to let her see Diem.
But Kenna is scrappy, and determined to prove to them that she’s responsible enough to be in her daughter’s life. She doesn’t have a car or a phone, so she walks from business to business in downtown Laramie, Wyoming, asking for jobs until she comes to a bar. Who’s the owner, you might ask? That would be Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s former best friend who has spent the past five years living across from Scotty’s parents and helping raise Diem. He’s also definitely Kenna’s new love interest.
“Reminders of Him” has more than its fair share of problems, most of which come down to character and performance – Kenna is a Mary Sue if I’ve ever seen one, and Withers doesn’t deliver the type of star turn a movie like this needs to succeed. But, the film pretty smoothly melds different tones and has a charming sense of humor, lulling you onto its wavelength with ease.
One of the biggest issues with “It Ends With Us,” the other Hoover adaptation that took the world by storm in 2024, was its failure to handle its tone. Ostensibly comedic moments fell flat, silly things were treated with sincerity, and serious moments were mishandled. “Reminders of Him” does a much better job at tone management. No one is overplaying their hand, each actor – particularly Monroe – focused on finding a way to play the specifics of this outsized situation with truth. The look of the film helps with that too. “Reminders of Him” reads a bit like a Hallmark movie with a larger budget. The small town, the gorgeous views, the indie Western soundtrack – there’s something a little comforting about all of that, like snuggling into a cozy blanket.
That all helps to make the film eminently watchable, but doesn’t cover for some of its more glaring issues. Kenna is what fan fiction writers would call a “Mary Sue” – a female character so lacking in flaws that it feels unrealistic. When you meet Scotty’s parents, their vitriol towards Kenna leads you to assume that the night Scotty died, she was driving drunk. We know that she left him at the scene of the crash, and she pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter. You understand why they might want to keep someone like that away from their granddaughter (although, it is kind of wild to not even deign to speak with Kenna about the possibility).
When you meet Kenna – and so much of this comes from Monroe, who is an expert at projecting damage – you think she might be a recovering addict, trying to prove to herself and everyone around her that she’s changed, that she’s overcome her flaws. But, as the plot unfolds and the details of the car accident become clear, it also becomes clear that Kenna’s only real flaw is that she’s self-sacrificing to a fault.
It must be difficult for an actor to play a character with so little complexity. But Monroe infuses Kenna with as much spunk and humor as she can, finding her vulnerability in the quiet moments and keeping all of her emotion just on the edge without letting it spill over. It’s an interesting choice for an actor so associated with horror movies to go for romance, but she’s up for the task. The other half of the equation, however, is lacking. Anyone with eyes can see that Withers is handsome, but his overreliance on that handsomeness holds Ledger back as a character.
In one scene, Kenna asks him if he hates her, and he responds by saying that he used to, but now he just thinks she’s the saddest girl he’s ever met. It’s the kind of line that should make the audience swoon a little bit, but the way Withers says it, it feels rote – like he knows he has to say it, but he doesn’t know why. Sure, he’s big and hot, and that does a lot of work in Kenna and Ledger’s intimate moments. But big and hot can only get you so far. There needs to be something a little deeper, a little beyond the surface that makes the audience lean in and take notes.