Reminders of Him
The third film version of a Colleen Hoover bestseller is appropriately predictable but is still the best yet.
Handling the truth: Tyriq Withers and Maika Monroe
Photo by Michelle Faye, Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Colleen Hoover is to the tearjerker what Agatha Christie was to the whodunnit. They are writers familiar with the demands of their audience and know how to write a good yarn. Hoover, originally a self-published scribe from Sulphur Springs, Texas, has seen her books become a staple of YA fiction, while two have already been adapted into Hollywood movies, It Ends With Us and Regretting You. Her 2015 tome Confess was translated into a seven-part TV series and Verity, starring Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, is coming to a multiplex near you this October.
Reminders of Him, adapted from Hoover’s #1 New York Times bestseller, is the perfect six-pack. That is, it’s packed with six key ingredients that is likely to win over its projected demographic: a misunderstood protagonist, a soundtrack of ear-worming ballads, a panorama of screensaver-worthy backdrops, an underrepresented minority, a really cute kitten and, not one, but two spectacular six-packs. It’s more than what Colleen Hoover’s intended audience could possibly want, even if it feels like ChatGPT might have had a little help with the narrative mechanics.
Maika Monroe plays Kenna Rowan, the hottest ex-con west of the 100th meridian. Once out of prison she returns to “the place where it all went wrong,” which happens to be called Paradise. But “Paradise,” she tells us, “is no paradise.” Without a job, a phone or an umbrella (and it rains a lot here), Kenna checks into an eccentric apartment complex which provides a kitten with each room. Kenna doesn’t want a kitten, but when she realises it comes with three weeks of free electricity, she takes the small cat (only in a Colleen Hoover novel). This is the sort of movie in which a five-year-old girl is called Diem (don’t carp), people forget to say what they really mean and a guy called Ledger runs a bar called the Bookstore (more nominative determinism for you). Kenna is writing her own book, a bulging bundle of papers which turn out to be letters to her late boyfriend, who she killed.
All this is revealed early on and we know a mile off that Kenna is not really a psycho and we’ll have to wait patiently to find out what really happened. We also know that Ledger, the Bookstore owner, is a surrogate father to little Diem and dotes on her and, given half a chance, he will probably have a sick-pack. And we also learn early on that Diem is the daughter of Kenna and the girl is not allowed to see her mother because the latter killed Diem’s father, Scotty, the love of Kenna’s life. Flashbacks here are de rigueur, so we get the meet-cute scene when Scotty (Rudy Pankow) first woos Kenna way back and another meet-cute scene when Kenna meets Ledger (Tyriq Withers), until he finds out who she is and turns against her.
As these characters are straight out of Central Casting, it’s hard not to warm to them, as one does to characters in a well-made soap, and Maika Monroe is a far more credible human here than she was in the flat and laughable 100 Nights of Hero (although it was great fun anticipating her fluctuating accents in that movie). There’s a fun turn from Monika Myers as an acerbic neighbour called Lady Diana, who has Down’s syndrome, and Tyriq Withers is suitably hunky as the 6’5” dreamboat who seems to pop up at all the most opportune moments. Thanks to a lightness of touch from the British director Vanessa Caswill (Love at First Sight; 2023), the denouement to all this, against the odds, is quite touching, even in spite of its predictability.
Cast: Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Rudy Pankow, Lainey Wilson, Nicholas Duvernay, Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford, Jennifer Robertson, Zoe Kosovic, Hilary Jardine, Monika Myers.
Dir Vanessa Caswill, Pro Colleen Hoover, Lauren Levine and Gina Matthews, Screenplay Colleen Hoover and Lauren Levine, Ph Tim Ives, Pro Des Francesca Massariol, Ed Michelle Harrison, Music Tom Howe, Costumes Jayna Mansbridge, Sound Warren Hendriks.
Heartbones Entertainment/Little Engine Productions-Universal Pictures.
114 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 13 March 2026. Cert. 12A.
