Producer: Colleen Hoover, Lauren Levine and Gina Matthews   Director: Vanessa Vaswill   Screenplay: Colleen Hoover and Lauren Levine   Cast: Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Rudy Pankow, Lainey Wilson, Jennifer Robertson, Zoe Kosovic, Monika Myers, Hilary Jardine, Nicholas Duvernay, Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford    Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C

It’s now apparent that Nicholas Sparks has passed the weeper torch to Colleen Hoover, three of whose romance books have now been adapted for the screen in less than two years, with a fourth scheduled for release later in 2026.  The best of them was the first, “It Ends With Us.”  It’s become notorious for the behind-the-scenes controversies, but Justin Baldoni, whatever his conduct during the shoot, gave a riveting performance as an abuser and directed that part of the story effectively.  Unfortunately, the rest of the picture was sentimental claptrap.

There followed “Regretting You,” a tonally clumsy and narratively convoluted tale of multiple romances and infidelities that was totally synthetic and silly.

“Reminders of Him” falls between the two.  As simplistic a narrative as “Regretting You” was absurdly complicated, it both benefits and loses from the straightforwardness of plotting, which avoids becoming ridiculous but in turn remains obstinately predictable despite the attempt by Hoover and co-writer Lauren Levine to juice it up with flashbacks and recitations from Kenna’s voluminous notebooks, mostly of the letters she’s penned to her dead boyfriend that introduce them. 

Juggling themes of maternal love, guilt and reconciliation, it focuses on Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe), who returns to Laramie, Wyoming after years in prison.  She was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the death of her fiancé Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow), who was killed in a car crash when she was driving under the influence. (They had spent the day celebrating his birthday at a lake.) 

Kenna was pregnant with Scotty’s child at the time and delivered the girl in prison.  The infant was immediately transferred to the care of Scotty’s parents Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), who became her guardians while Kenna’s parental rights were terminated.  But naturally she now wants to see the girl, Diem (Zoe Kosovic), something the Landrys bitterly oppose.

Initially so does Ledger Ward (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s best buddy who’d, however, never met Kenna because he was away playing for the Denver Broncos—until he suffered a shoulder injury.  Now he’s returned to Laramie, where he owns a bar and lives alone in his parents’ house across from the Landrys.  He’s become a sort of surrogate dad to Diem and is extremely protective of her and her grandparents.

Kenna has it rough in Laramie.  The only job she can get is as a bagger at a supermarket, thanks to the intervention of the assistant manager (Lainey Wilson).  And the only housing she can afford is at the Paradise Motel, where the owner (Jennifer Robertson) cuts the rent if she takes a kitten as a pet. 

But in one respect she’s quite lucky.  She wanders into Ledger’s place looking for work, and eventually gets not only a weekend gig there but personal interest from her new employer.  Ledger falls for her, and vice versa, though for a time neither recognizes who the other is; and when they do, Ledger’s divided loyalties force him to prevent Kenna and the Landrys from accidentally bumping into one another and Kenna to hide when the Landrys unexpectedly show up (at one point escaping the bar by rushing into a rainstorm).  Ledger’s partner in the business (Nicholas Duvernay) tries to advise him, but his gentle observations don’t help much.

It’s all pretty ridiculous, a slimmed-down version of the nonsensical coincidences of “Remembering You.”  And there’s absolutely no suspense to all the furious playacting, since it’s inevitable that Kenna and Ledger’s affair will be revealed—through the Landrys’ surprise appearance at the place where the couple has made their special love nest (a huge house Ledger is building on a breathtaking mountaintop)–and that, after some difficult moments, Grace and Patrick will accept Kenna’s place in Diem’s life as well as her relationship with Ledger. (One of the letters from Kenna’s notebooks recounts the accident and proves that her behavior after the accident wasn’t as callous as her conviction led the Landrys to believe.)  It all comes across as prefabricated, unlike Ledger’s palatial mountain home.

Monroe brings a tediously mournful quality to Kenna alleviated only by the flashbacks to her life with Scotty, and the teary finale when she finally reconnects with her daughter in the Landry backyard, and Withers (who also played a football player in the atrocious “Him,” minus the “Reminders”) exudes a rugged stoicism; their scenes together never get past a soap-operatic feel. Pankow tries too hard to embody Scotty’s lovability, but the character obstinately refuses to develop into anything but a generic high-octane nice guy; everything about him remains unclear (Does he have a job?  Was he still living with his parents?)  Vets Graham and Whitford show their professionalism in stock roles, while whether you find Kosovic adorable or irritating will be a matter of taste. 

Among the rest the most notable is Monika Myers as Kenna’s Paradise neighbor and fellow market bag-stuffer Diana, who has Down Syndrome.  You might well cringe at the character, not because of her condition but because the script and director Vanessa Vaswill use her as comic relief, her penchant for brusque behavior and po-faced outbursts a signal for laughs.  It’s borderline unseemly, as crude an appeal for an audience reaction as the frequent shots of that kitten at the start, though admittedly the feline’s a scene-stealer.  (Ivy does disappear rather quickly, though.)

Production designer Francesca Massariol has made sure to include plenty of signs with Laramie on them to obscure the fact that the shoot was actually around Calgary, while cinematographer Tim Ives obviously relished the chance to use the vast open spaces in widescreen montages often used as transitional devices accompanied by the guitar strains Tom Howe’s score favors.  Michelle Harrison’s editing is on the slow side, extending the running-time to nearly two hours, but then she had to give the bedroom scenes staged by Vaswill for Monroe and Withers time to generate the requisite steaminess, and the concluding meeting of Kenna and Diem the opportunity to get viewers’ tear ducts working full-blast.

Hoover’s bestsellers ensure a ready audience for adaptations of her books, but releasing four of them over the course of two years points to a danger of oversaturating the market, a lesson it took a while for Marvel to learn.  Still, “Reminders of Him” will appeal to readers of this modern Fannie Hurst’s ever-accumulating tomes, and though the glossy weepie is a shallow, obvious piece of work, its heart-on-sleeve emotionalism will satisfy their desire for a good cry.  Owners of the Kleenex concession should do bang-up business.