Unforgettable Review
R: Sexual Content, Violence, Some Language, and Brief Partial Nudity
Warner Bros. Pictures, RatPac Entertainment
1 Hr and 40 Minutes
Cast: Katherine Heigl, Rosario Dawson, Geoff Stults, Isabella Rice, Cheryl Ladd, Whitney Cummings
REVIEW: Every year, we get a film where crazy woman or man enters the life of another woman or man threatening to take it apart due to their infatuation with either the person or their significant other. They’re always are released in September and released by Sony’s Screen Gems. Ever since they released Obsessed in 2009 they’ve remaking the same concep--wait Warner Bros? What are you doing with an Obsessed ripoff? Good news, you got Rosario Dawson as your protagonist. Bad news, we got Katherine Heigl as your antagonist. And its rated R? This is going to be great right?
Tessa Connover (Katherine Heigl) is barely coping with the end of her marriage when her ex-husband, David, becomes happily engaged to Julia (Rosario Dawson). Trying to settle into her new role as a wife and a stepmother, Julia believes she has finally met the man of her dreams, the man who can help her put her own troubled past behind her. Tessa's jealousy takes a pathological turn, and she will stop at nothing to turn Julia's dream into the ultimate nightmare.
THE GOOD: For a directorial debut after decades of producing films such as Heathers, Ed Wood, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ramona & Beezus, several Nicholas Sparks productions, and If I Stay, (you can see the shift of career choices just by film titles) Denise Di Novi does a fine job controlling her actors and having them deliver fine performances. I’m not going to lie, I thoroughly enjoyed Katherine Heigl in this. This is honestly the first time I liked her performance in a movie since Knocked Up. Di Novi actually lets Heigl shine in ways you never thought she would. I’m not saying her performance was great, but it is passable.
Rosario Dawson single-handedly keeps the movie afloat. Unlike Beyonce and Ali Larter, Dawson knows how to maintain a great performance. She is the one you have to root for. Even though her character Julia isn’t that likable, Dawson’s performance really makes you look past it at times. I mean who else am I going to root for right?
THE BAD: What’s the deal with Warner Bros. trying to steal Sony’s thunder? Last month they attempted to do that with CHiPs in an attempt to cash in on the success of Sony’s 21 Jump Street and now we have Unforgettable which is NOTHING BUT A CASH IN ON SONY’S OBSESSED! FOR GOD'S SAKE THE TIME OF THE RELEASE DATE BARELY EVEN DIFFERS!
Obsessed Release Date: April 24th, 2009
UnforgettableRelease Date: April 21st, 2017
For God’s sake, Sony ripped off their own film nearly every year in the month of September with no but black actors. But Warner Bros? This is a new low for you guys to distribute this.
What is up with Katherine Heigl playing a psychopathic killer in movies? This honestly isn’t the first time she’s played this type of character. At first, I thought this was the sequel to Home Sweet Hell and Heigl was playing the same character. I actually prefer this over the “single woman who can’t get a man” character she usually played in her earlier work. But honestly, her entire method for this movie is either straight face or crazy eyes or both.
There is a scene earlier in the movie whereJulia goes to pick out a dress at a shop and the employee tells her that Tessa is one of her best customers. After ditching both the dress and the store like a normal person does, in a later scene, Tessa uninvitingly goes to her ex-husband David’s brewery opening party, She doesn't only show up, but she also goes to a little podium and makes a speech while making Julia look like an idiot.
- Who allowed her to come to the party?
- Who allowed to let her make a speech?
- Why doesn’t David tell her to leave right after?
- WHY DOES JULIA LEAVE HER PHONE UNATTENDED IN THE OPEN BY TESSA?
Every stupid action each character makes just adds on to the questionable list of stupidity. It really makes sense since this from two screenwriters who written work visibly differs. One one hand, you have David Leslie Johnson whose work included Orphan, The Conjuring 2, and several episodes of The Walking Dead (don’t worry he wrote some shit too including Red Riding Hood and Wrath of the Titans). Then, on the other hand, you have Christina Hodson whose work includes….Shut In. YEAH! THE #2 MOVIE THAT WAS ON MY WORST OF LIST OF 2016 who is somehow currently writing the untitled Bumblebee spin-off movie!
There’s no real character to root for because they’re all really bad people. Julia is supposed to be the empowered heroine of the film, but there is a scene in the middle of the film where she confronts Tessa about how to raise her daughter, Lily. For a fiancée, she has no place to tell Tessa’s daughter what to do. Oh sorry, did I say fiancée? I meant FIANCÉE! Yeah, she’s not David’s official wife or anything, she’s just a fiancée. A fiancée who's occupation is a writer for an online book service and harbors a secretive dangerous past with a former lover who she has a restraining order on. This woman literally had no right to tell off Tessa and her parenting style when she isn't even the parent.
The real problem of Unforgettable is the same problem I had with Hodson’s first written Magnum Opus film; there is absolutely nothing of substance. We’ve all seen this movie before. It doesn’t add anything new to its clichéd story for it rather dumbs it down to unintentionally laughable sequences. There are only two things it adds. One being its R rating which is something none of those Screen Gems films ever had. There’s nothing much to it really though. The best you get from this is a sex scene that honestly feels as if it came right out of a Fifty Shades of Grey film and graphic blood with every person who gets injured. Another thing that is added is psychological development of Tessa’s character. The film actually goes out of its way to show you where Tessa got her personality from (whatever your first guess is, the answer is most likely yes). BUT THEN (like these sons of bitches love to do), by the end of the movie try to use that device as a mean to tease a sequel. At that point you’re just leaving the theater going,
The entire movie’s plot points are mostly interconnected by computers. How does Tessa get Julia’s background files? Going onto a spy website. How does she find out about her abusive ex-boyfriend? by connecting Julia’s phone that she stole to a computer where she finds her restraining order documents. How does Tessa get in contact with the ex? She makes a fake Facebook account of Julia, adds him as a friend, and then contact him through some form of iMessage. I swear to you people this is not a joke. If this whole set up all happened because of Tessa being on her computer, this is how easily the film could’ve end.
Find the I.P address of the phone Tessa is on. That Goddamn easy. Literally, nothing more to do.
This entire film is nothing more than a huge waste of time to a degree that it'll make you appreciate Obsessed more because at least with it’s climax, it delivers on a badass action sequence that is thrilling and fun to watch. There is a genuine build up in that movie and barely any technological devices are used to move its story. Mind you that was a PG13 film. This is rated R and its only used for a sex scene. If you have a female v. female R-rated thriller, you might as well have your climatic fight be balls to the wall bloody and violent. It’s really anticlimactic and ends in the dumbest way imaginable. It's not even well choreographed. I don’t even think any choreography went into it. At least the Ali Larter and Beyonce fight was both well choreographed and had actual choreography.
LAST STATEMENT: Though Dawson and Heigl give fine performances, Unforgettable is a terribly written, dull, and an overall poor excuse for an erotic thriller making this its title minus its prefix.
Rating: 1/5 | 27%
Super Scene: Julia and David get it on in a bathroom. (HEY IT WAS THE ONLY THING THAT KEPT ME AWAKE IN THIS MOVIE)
