Review: Reminiscence fails to leave pleasant memories

Hugh Jackman’s latest movie Reminiscence is in theaters this weekend, but does this sloppy sci-fi flick warrant a watch?

So, Reminiscence is a new film hitting theaters this weekend, trying to coax movie-goers back into the cinemas with promises of action, romance and mystery. Unfortunately, Reminiscence falters on every count, with the exception of the mystery, namely the mystery of how a first draft ended up getting produced.

Seriously though folks, this wasn’t a good movie. I’ll explain, with minimal spoilers.

While the film has a lot of problems, the biggest issue in Reminiscence for me was the script. While structurally the story makes sense (Hugh Jackman meets woman, falls in love, disappears, conflict, etc) and goes through all the required beats, there was no effort in making those beats entertaining or interesting. You know from the very second Hugh Jackman meets his MacGuffin love interest that they are going to fall “in love,” which the film shows with one scene of bad dialogue at a bar, then a scene of them about to have sex, and then (spoilers), “Oh everything we just saw was Hugh Jackman’s memory and the girl’s actually missing!” Okay great, so I know he’s “in love” and needs to find her, but I certainly don’t care because there was no surprise or style in conveying that point.

So the story beats are uninspired. The dialog is also pretty bad. It’s just not fun to listen to, but seems to think it’s very clever. It’s also painfully expositional. When I hear a minor character say to a major character, “Hey I heard you were the best shot back in the army,” I want to roll my eyes up and keep them hidden in my head. When I hear a shadowy villain say to another baddie, “Have you found her yet?” I want to throw up my hands to shield myself from the hammer coming down on me. Those are just two examples of the script tactlessly hitting you with information.

The worst offender is a rambling interior monologue from our good friend Hughie. “Who was she?” he asks himself. “Could it be this happened? Could it be that happened? The war, the corruption, the cops, the blah blah blah blah blah blah.” It’s grating and we get to hear it often, because the film doesn’t have the imagination to get information across any other way. Please script writers, if you’re trying to make a noir detective-type film, take a lesson from Blade Runner and Harrison Ford: Keep the monologuing to a minimum. Whatever value it adds, it subtracts far more.

The talking takes up about 80% of the runtime, leaving remarkably little time for action. And what action is there is pretty standard: a shoot-out scene, a chase scene, a fight scene, check check check. If I had to chock up the movie’s problems — the lack of action, the incessant dialogue — to one thing, it would have to be the setting.

Reminiscence takes place in a flooded version of Miami, some time in the future. I could ramble about why that setting makes no sense at all, but I don’t think I need to, because it doesn’t make any difference. The movie actively hides from its setting, because if it embraced it, the filmmakers would have to reckon with the challenge of how to shoot it. Instead, it sets a majority of its scenes indoors, and the few outdoor scenes are handled one of three ways: either its a real location next to the ocean, a coastline or island, or it’s the one set they have for right outside Hugh Jackman’s office where they can actually make it look flooded, and if the characters are ever outside another building, then they get the production crew to hit the place with a hose; make it look like some flooding happens here sometimes maybe, but not right now. Now hurry up and roll film before the sun dries it up.

The movie doesn’t do anything with this setting. There’s no environmentalist message nor any thematic resonance. So why set it in a flooded Miami at all? I couldn’t tell you for sure, but my guess is that they just wanted the aesthetic of a dystopian future like Blade Runner, so it’ll show you shots of buildings popping out of the ocean while Hugh Jackman talks to himself to make you think the movie is about that, but it isn’t.

Reminiscence wants to look like a film noir, so the love interest sings in sketchy bars with a big radio mic, and Hugh Jackman carries around a useless gun and works with detectives, even though the character isn’t a cop. It wants a sci-fi aesthetic, so it has this memory-retrieving contraption that doesn’t make much sense (why are people’s memories shown from other people’s points of view?  Wouldn’t it be from their point of view and not some 3D environmental simulation?). Reminiscence borrows from lots of better movies to distract you from its own lack of substance.

I could keep ranting and nitpicking, but better I end it here: Reminiscence does not deliver on its promises in any satisfying way. The dialogue is bad, I didn’t care for any of the characters, there’s hardly any good action, and the editing is at best bland and at worst noticeably distracting. Most of all, the movie is boring.

If you’re going to the theaters this weekend, try to catch something else. You want no memories of Reminiscence.

Grade: D

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