New Zealand Herald

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Solid performances and a sassy script make this more interesting than your average predictable love story.


Twilight star Robert Pattinson proves he’s more than just every teenage girl’s favourite vampire with an intense performance in this smart and engaging romantic drama.


It’s a touching love story full of sentiment, reminding us to make the most of every day and to treasure those we love – a theme hammered home by a startling, unexpected ending.


It’s this twist for which Remember Me will mostly be talked about, regardless of whether you think it’s a breathtaking addition or a cheap ploy. Before this blindside, however, there’s an angst-filled young love affair to enjoy, largely thanks to the strong on-screen chemistry between Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin (Claire from Lost).


Without the pale complexion and red lipstick, it’s easier to see why teens swoon over Pattinson. As Tyler, he’s brooding, intelligent and sexy; a lost soul weighted down by the suicide of his older brother and a strained relationship with his wealthy father (Pierce Brosnan).


Living rough in a grotty New York apartment with his annoying but loyal best friend Aidan (Tate Ellington), Tyler spends his days working in a bookshop and keeping an eye on his little sister (Ruby Jerins). Essentially though he’s just a lost soul trying to find some meaning in his life, often at the bottom of a beer bottle.


His saviour comes in the form of Ally (de Ravin), a young college student he asks out principally to annoy her cop father (Chris Cooper); a dubious beginning which will come back to haunt Tyler. The two fall in love, drawn together by the fact Ally too has suffered great tragedy. Apart from Aidan who just rambles in an attempt to lighten the mood, there’s some nice, genuine scripting that offers somewhat more than the normal romantic film banter. Even when it does get a little cheesy, such as a water fight while washing the dishes on the second date, Ally’s character acknowledges it, making the cliched scene forgivable.


The characters verge on being contrived, but Remember Me is, thankfully, grittier and more realistic than other romantic dramas (such as the adaptations of Nicholas Spark’s novels The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and Nights in Rodanthe), and while Pattinson will find his fanbase is still mostly made up of females, plenty of them will now be over 16.


Cast: Robert Pattinson, Emilie de Ravin
Director: Allen Coulter
Running time: 112 mins
Rating: M (Violence, Offensive Language & Sex Scenes)

More after the cut!

Eye Weekly

For a film bent so surely on ascending its brooding star to the status of “actor,” Remember Me is surprisingly good. First-time screenwriter Will Fetters and TV director Allen Coulter have concocted a relatable family melodrama/teen-angst period piece (it’s set in New York City in 2001) that has a sense of humour about itself and packs a surprising twist.


Robert Pattinson demonstrates considerable depth as NYU student Tyler Hawkins, a nihilistic child of divorce trying to protect his younger sister from the terrors of her private school. After Tyler is hassled by a cop, his dweeby roommate encourages him to court the enforcer’s daughter, a classmate, as revenge. Star-crossed love ensues.


Lost’s Emilie de Ravin infuses love interest Ally Craig with great intelligence, circumventing what would otherwise be a manic pixie dream girl cliché. (The couple’s first date features a long monologue about how Ally always eats her dessert first because life is too short). Amid the odds stacked against the couple in the form of distant fathers and class warfare — Tyler’s dad (Pierce Brosnan) is a wealthy Manhattan CEO; Ally’s (Chris Cooper) is an abusive cop from Queens — Remember Me captures a true tenderness in the way its characters experience first love. (Hot-plate nostalgia, anyone?)


Though it’s clearly concerned with being a star vehicle, Remember Me offers self-aware commentary on personal and historical upheaval. At the very least, it should provoke strong reactions from those desperate to see their treasured Edward as he swears, smokes and finally screws his way to self-actualization (with a New York accent, no less). Once you witness RPattz unleashed, no virginal vampire will ever do again.

Slant Magazine

While it shouldn’t be that surprising that a doomed post-adolescent romance like Remember Me has a bathetic ending, the one thing people will recollect about this film eventually is its abrupt and risibly tasteless denouement. For fear of spoilering any Twilight fans out there, all I’ll say is that in the film’s last moments, screenwriter Will Fetters desperately tries to pull together several oblique references to why the film’s New York City setting matters during a certain time period and falls flat on his face.


Fetters tiptoes on little cat feet up to this pivotal moment in an attempt to impress the viewer with the painful sincerity of bad boy Robert Pattinson’s volatile ex-NYU student-cum-bohemian and his equally free-spirited girlfriend (Emilie de Ravin). During the ending, Fetters slams on the brakes frantically and, for no defensible reason, tries to turn the story into an epic tragedy for a modern (i.e. tween) audience. Never mind that this ending is crass beyond belief. The film’s star couple can’t even convince us that they’re really in love so what does it matter that the ending completely and totally shits the bed? (Look at the way they splash each other with water in his shower and wind up necking after they realize that they’re both all wet—now that’s what I call l’amour fou!) The climax is a glorious train wreck of an ending for a film that’s as inauthentic as it is egregiously clichéd. R.Patz haters will get a big kick out of seeing the crestfallen faces of fangirls as they trudge out of the movie theater not knowing what hit them.


Desperately trying to show that he has range beyond playing sparkly teenage boy vampires, Pattinson plays Tyler Hawkins, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking rebel without a razorblade. Tragedy runs in his family; his brother Michael died six years ago, creating a huge rift between his wealthy biological father (Pierce Brosnan) and the rest of his family. Tyler works at the Strand, has daddy issues, and decides to ask a girl out based solely on a bet made by his awkward frat-guy-with-a-heart-of-gold roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington). Somebody stop this kid before he does something drastic, like smoke a joint just to spite this cruel, unfriendly world of ours. To help put out Tyler’s ever-burning short fuse, enter Ally (de Ravin), an equally mercurial 21-year-old who eats desert before dinner and also has daddy issues after her mother is brutally gunned down on a subway platform. They both come from broken homes—how romantic.


De Ravin and Pattinson do everything they can to indulge Fetters’s desperately out-of-touch script by looking as earnest and angsty as they can. The trouble is neither one is a competent actor. De Ravin splutters and pouts through her scenes while Pattinson looks like a constipated six-year-old with a five-o-clock shadow as he rails with all of his might against everyone and everything. I liked him more when he sparkled.


Heartfelt though it may be, Fetters’s script is so inept that it reflects more accurately the world according to bad CW dramas than anything you might encounter outside of the realm of the boob tube. Scene after scene sinks underneath the weight of pretentious exchanges, as when Tyler tells Ally that he’s not a sociology major but is rather “undecided,” to which she retorts kittenishly, “Undecided about what?” and he, of course, sighs heavily before saying, “Everything.” Explosions of emotional violence, which are meant to show how everybody in our young lovers’ extended family is more than a little, like, complicated, are delightfully campy. Slaps, screams, and airborne fire extinguishers thoroughly destroy the film’s air of mopey sincerity to bits, making the film’s manipulative finale the histrionic explosion to end them all.

At the Movies – Australia

Review by Margaret Pomeranz


In REMEMBER ME, ROBERT PATTINSON plays an angry young man, Tyler, who blames his very rich father Charles – PIERCE BROSNAN – for the suicide of his older brother. When he gets into a fight one night he’s roughed up quite severely by a policeman, Neil – CHRIS COOPER. As revenge, his friend Aiden – TATE ELLINGTON – suggests he seduce Neil’s daughter Ally – EMILIE DE RAVIN – who is in their World Politics class at college…


Tyler and Ally fall in love and something good seems to come out of the relationship for Tyler. Charles likes Ally, and so do the rest of his family, including his younger sister Caroline – RUBY JERINS.


There is something strange about REMEMBER ME. I found myself disbelieving just about every emotion, every motivation, nothing seemed to hang together so that the whole thing became a bit tedious. And I know ROBERT PATTINSON is every young women’s soulful heartthrob but he’s such a mopey actor. Mind you he isn’t irritating like TATE ELLINGTON who plays his mate.


But the women are good. Young EMILIE DE RAVIN is lovely as Ally and even younger RUBY JERINS is a revelation as Caroline, she’s fabulous. And even though I get the ending, I don’t really. This is the second feature of Allen Coulter who made Hollywoodland.


It’s based on a screenplay by newcomer Will Fetters. I think their aim was high, the reach a bit less.


Further comments


MARGARET: David?


DAVID: I think Allen Coulter has done a lot of television, hasn’t he?


MARGARET: Yes.


DAVID: The Sopranos and things like that.


MARGARET: Yes, and Sex and City.


DAVID: I thought this was a really interesting film and you didn’t mention that really both of the young people have tragedies in their past, because the girl’s mother was killed, as we see in the very opening scene, in a quite stupid shooting on a subway station platform, and that’s why she has this idea, as she says in the scene we saw, that you’ve got to – life may end anytime. You know, you’ve got to live for the day and so on.


MARGARET: But didn’t you find that a little bit…


DAVID: No, I think, in the context of the character, I found it good. I think Emilie de Ravin is another young Australian actor who is hitting the big time in America.


MARGARET: Yes.


DAVID: I thought she was very good. I think Robert Pattinson is channelling the young James Dean or the young Marlon Brando perhaps a little bit too insistently.


MARGARET: Yes.


DAVID: He was one of the film’s executive producers and he obviously wanted to get this part. But, look, I think it’s an interesting film and the ending, which obviously we can’t talk about, I thought was quite effective. So I’m going to give it three and a half.


MARGARET: No, I actually felt disconnected from this film for a lot of its running time, so I’m only going to give it two and a half.

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