Remember Me (2010 film)

Remember Me is a 2010 American romantic coming-of-age drama film directed by Allen Coulter, and screenplay by Will Fetters. It stars Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin, Chris Cooper, Lena Olin, and Pierce Brosnan. The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics, mainly due to its ending.

Remember Me
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAllen Coulter
Produced byNicholas Osborne
Trevor Engelson
Erik Feig
Robert Pattinson[1]
Written byWill Fetters
Starring
Music byMarcelo Zarvos
CinematographyJonathan Freeman
Edited byAndrew Mondshein
Production
company
Underground Films
Distributed bySummit Entertainment
Release date
  • March 1, 2010 (2010-03-01) (New York premiere)
  • March 12, 2010 (2010-03-12)
Running time
108 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$16 million[2]
Box office$56 million[2]

Plot

In New York City in 1991, Alyssa "Ally" Craig is waiting with her mother for the subway, when they are mugged by two young men, who shoot her mother after boarding the train.

Ten years later, Ally is a student at New York University (NYU), and lives with her father, Neil, a New York Police Department detective. Tyler Hawkins audits classes at NYU and works at the university bookstore. He has a strained relationship with his workaholic businessman father, Charles, because his older brother, Michael, died by suicide years before. Charles ignores his youngest child, Caroline, of whom Tyler is protective.

One night, with his roommate, Aidan, Tyler gets involved in somebody else's fight, and is arrested by Neil. Aidan calls Charles to bail Tyler out, but he does not stick around to have a conversation with his father. Aidan sees Neil dropping Ally off, realizing that she is his daughter. He approaches Tyler with the idea to get back at the detective by persuading him to sleep with and dump Ally. Tyler and Ally go to dinner, kiss at the end of the night, and continue seeing one another. While at Tyler's apartment, Aidan convinces the pair to go to a party, after which Ally is very drunk, and ends up throwing up. She passes out before Tyler can get her to tell him Neil's phone number. The following day, she and her father argue. Neil slaps her, and Ally flees back to Tyler's apartment.

Caroline, a budding artist, is featured in an art show, and Tyler asks his father to attend the show. When he fails to show up, Caroline is heartbroken and Tyler confronts him in a board room filled with people, which causes his father's frustration to boil over. Tyler accuses his father of willingly distancing himself from his children to never feel the pain of losing another child, and father and son nearly come to blows. Neil's partner recognizes Tyler with Ally on a train, so Neil breaks into Tyler's apartment, and confronts him. Tyler provokes Neil by confessing to Aidan's plan and his initial reason for meeting Ally, which forces Tyler to confess to Ally. She leaves and returns home. Aidan visits Ally at her father's home to explain that he is to blame, and Tyler is genuinely in love with her.

Caroline is bullied by classmates at a birthday party where they cut a chunk of her hair off. Ally and Aidan visit Tyler's mother's apartment, where Caroline is sobbing. Tyler accompanies his sister back to school, and when her classmates tease her for her new haircut, Tyler turns violent, and ends up in jail. Charles is impressed that Tyler stood up for his sister, and they connect. Charles asks Tyler to meet with the lawyers at his office.

Tyler spends the night with Ally, and they reveal they love each other after making love. Charles takes Caroline to school. He calls Tyler to let him know this, and explains that he will be late. Tyler is happy that his father is spending time with Caroline. He tells Charles that he will wait in his office. He looks on Charles's computer, featuring a slideshow of pictures with Tyler, Michael, and Caroline when they were younger.

After Charles drops Caroline off at school, she sits in her classroom, where the teacher writes the date on the blackboard as September 11, 2001. Tyler looks out the window of his father's office, which is revealed to be located on the 101st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Once the terrorist attacks begin, the rest of the family, Aidan and Ally, look at the towers before the camera pans over the rubble, showing Tyler's diary. In a voice-over of his diary, Tyler reveals to Michael that he loves him, and he forgives him for killing himself. Tyler is buried next to Michael.

Some time later, Caroline and Charles seem to have a healthy father-daughter relationship. Aidan, who has since gotten a tattoo of Tyler's name on his arm, is working hard in school, and Ally gets on the subway at the same spot where her mother was killed.

Cast and characters

Premiere

The film premiered on March 1, 2010, at the Paris Theatre in New York City,[3] and received its wide release on March 12, 2010. It is rated 12A in the UK and PG-13 in the United States.

Home media

Summit Entertainment announced the DVD and Blu-ray release of June 22, 2010.[4]

Reception

Critical response

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a "Rotten" rating of 27% based on 108 reviews.[5] The site's consensus states, "Its leads are likeable, but Remember Me suffers from an overly maudlin script and a borderline offensive final twist."[6] Metacritic gives it a score of 40 out of 100, based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[7]

Todd McCarthy gave the film a mixed review in Variety, writing "The modestly scaled film delivers some moving and affecting moments amid a preponderance of scenes of frequently annoying people behaving badly."[8] Andrea Gronvall gave a similar assessment in The Chicago Reader, writing "Allen Coulter directed this morose and sluggish drama, which gets more mileage from Pattinson's anguished profile than from Will Fetters's thunderously overwritten screenplay."[9] Derek Malcolm wrote in This Is London, "Decently shot and directed as it is, it lacks any real flame."[10] Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a positive review, stating the "scenes between Pattinson and de Ravin exude genuine charm." Honeycutt goes on to say that the score and cinematography brought "notable sparkle to this heartfelt drama."[11]

Jake Coyle of The Associated Press did not favor the film and said the "most pleasing thing about [the film] is its boldness. It may be affected, but [it] is at least aiming for an intriguing character study — a positive sign in the young career of Pattinson," who he says steps away from "Twilight, apparently in search of his Five Easy Pieces or Rebel Without a Cause."[12] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+, calling it a "shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people." Schwarzbaum was also critical of Pattinson's acting and the script.[13] Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe gave the film a half star out of four, commenting that the film "crassly repurposes tragedy to excuse its cliches."[14] Other critics also found the movie's invocation of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center offensive and exploitative, such as Lisa Kennedy of the Denver Post, who wrote "The finale manages to be tasteful and exploitative at the same time. It touts forgiveness while being mildly infuriating. Such is the danger of borrowing from the enormous to merely entertain. If that. Forgettable should be the last thing a movie touching on the events of 9/11 should be. Yet 'Remember Me' is just that."[15] Elizabeth Weitzman of The New York Daily News also denounced the film's ending, writing, "There's no shame in exploring tragedy through art. But exploiting it to make your very ordinary movie feel more important? That's another story."[16]

Roger Ebert generally liked the film, giving it three out of four stars and characterizing it as a "well-made movie. I cared about the characters. I felt for them. Liberate them from the plot's destiny, which is an anvil around their necks, and you might have something" but goes on to say it "tries to borrow profound meaning, but succeeds only in upstaging itself so overwhelmingly that its characters become irrelevant".[17]

Box office

Remember Me opened in fifth place,[18] behind Alice in Wonderland, Green Zone, She's Out of My League, and Shutter Island. It grossed $8,089,139 in its first weekend. As of July 6, Remember Me accumulated a total of $56,032,889 at the box office.

Accolades
Year Ceremony Award Result
2010 Teen Choice Awards Choice Movie: Drama Nominated
Choice Movie Actor: Drama – Robert Pattinson Won
Nickelodeon Australian Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Movie Star – Robert Pattinson Nominated
Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Actor – Robert Pattinson Nominated

Soundtrack

The official Remember Me soundtrack album was released on March 9, 2010. An album of the score composed by Marcelo Zarvos was also released. The movie contained 26 credited songs,[19] while the soundtrack album contained 14 of them, including songs by Sigur Rós, The Beta Band, Ani Difranco, Supergrass and National Skyline. An Indian/Pakistani song, "Saason ki Mala Peh Simroon" by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is also heard in the movie when Tyler takes Ally on their first date at Gandhi Restaurant.

References
  1. Claudia Puig (March 12, 2010). "Forget 'Twilight': Pattinson is at his best in 'Remember Me'". USA Today. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
  2. "Remember Me (2010)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
  3. "'Remember Me': Robert Pattinson makes Fallon swoon, Kristen Stewart walks the red carpet". Los Angeles Times. 2010-03-02. Retrieved 2010-11-25.
  4. "Remember Me DVD, Blu-ray (2010) Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin". MovieNewz.com. 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
  5. Remember Me, retrieved 2018-10-02
  6. "Remember Me Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
  7. Remember Me Reviews, Ratings, Credits. Metacritic. Retrieved 2010-11-25.
  8. McCarthy, Todd. "Variety".
  9. ChicagoReader Review
  10. This is London Review
  11. Lister, Joan (March 9, 2010). "Robert Pattinson's REMEMBER ME: Thumbs Up from THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER". Alt Film Guide. Retrieved March 8, 2010.
  12. Jake Coyle (March 10, 2010). "Review: Pattinson still brooding in `Remember Me'". Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  13. Lisa Schwarzbaum (March 10, 2010). "Remember Me". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 11, 2010.
  14. Wesley Morris (March 12, 2010). "Pattinson in a brood for love". The Boston Globe. Retrieved March 12, 2010.
  15. Kennedy, Lisa (10 March 2010). "Movie review: "Remember Me" an affair to forget". The Denver Post. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  16. Weitzman, Elizabeth (11 March 2010). "'Remember Me' review: 9/11 tale starring Robert Pattinson is an affair to forget". New York Daily News. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
  17. Roger Ebert (2010-03-10). "'Remember Me' Review". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
  18. "Weekend Box Office Results for March 12–14, 2010". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
  19. "Remember Me Soundtrack". What-Song.com. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
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