The third Colleen Hoover book-to-movie adaptation, “Reminders of Him,” was a surprisingly good movie. 

As someone who has never read a CoHo book, this movie was great on its own.

The movie starts out with Kenna, played by Maika Monroe, uprooting her dead boyfriend’s memorial cross on the side of the road after getting out of jail for vehicular manslaughter. 

Which, as the audience finds out later in the movie, was not her fault whatsoever and her being thrown in jail for seven years was only because she didn’t try to get out of it. Kenna thought she had nothing left to live for. 

Until she found out she was pregnant with her dead boyfriend Scotty Landry’s, played by Rudy Pankow, daughter. Yet another piece of media where Outer Banks star Pankow just dies. 

Back in the present, Kenna moves into a worn-down apartment complex and meets Scotty’s old best friend, Ledger, played by Tyriq Withers, at the bookshop-turned-bar he owns. However, Ledger doesn’t recognize Kenna.

Obviously there’s tension straight off the bat, but Kenna runs away as soon as she realizes who she was getting coffee from and talking to.

The reveal that Ledger played for the Denver Broncos was the most important thing to me for the majority of the movie. Especially because there’s so much Broncos memorabilia in the bar and in his office. 

Kenna’s only goal in the movie is to meet her six-year-old daughter, Diem, but her almost parents-in-law do not want Kenna anywhere near their town, much less her child.

Lauren Graham plays Grace, the mother of Scotty, and since I know her from “Gilmore Girls,” it was extremely hard for me to see her as anything but the witty and happy Lorelai Gilmore. In this movie, she doesn’t speak much and is definitely not witty. She’s also extremely resigned.

Also, I don’t get emotional at movies very often, but seeing Graham just absolutely broken near the end wrecked me. I only went to this movie because of Graham, but I was not prepared to barely see her and bawl when I did. 

The acting throughout was great, even Zoe Kosovic who played Diem had fantastic line delivery, even if she was a little hard to understand.

Lady Diana, played by Monika Myers, was hilarious in every scene she was a part of. From calling Ledger a “jerk” to taking a slice of laminated cheese from Kenna’s lonely and sad apartment, she stole the show.  

The actors’ performances kept me on the edge of my seat for a good bit of the movie, too. Specifically, when Ledger and Kenna got found out and when Ledger realized who Kenna was. 

The score for the movie was beautifully chosen, with some country music, notably “Neon Moon” by Brooks & Dunn and some mellow pop songs such as “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron. 

The song that stuck out to me most, though, was “Yellow” by Coldplay. It was the song that played during the car crash scene with Scotty and Kenna. It was the perfect slow and sad love song option for that scene and the one succeeding it. A cover was also created for the movie, which had a folksy twist added to it to fit with other songs in the soundtrack. 

Yellow is also a very prominent color in the movie, as everything associated with Diem is yellow. From her scrunchie to her favorite snow cone flavor, it was all yellow. 

However, “Reminders of Him” isn’t without faults. I wasn’t a fan of how rushed the movie felt. Somehow, both a lot and not enough happened in the almost two-hour runtime.  I felt like there were things that could’ve been explored more or better. Maybe we could’ve learned what position Ledger played on the Broncos or why he opened the bar.

All in all, though, it seems like CoHo has learned from her atrocious Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively’s “It Ends With Us” adaptation because “Reminders of Him” did not disappoint.

Categories: Arts & Entertainment