It's All Too Easy To Forget 'Reminiscence'
Starring Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, Thandiwe Newton, Cliff Curtis, Daniel Wu
Rated PG-13
Sci-fi, drama
Run time: 1 hr, 56 min
Directed and written by Lisa Joy
In theaters and on HBO Max August 20, 2021
It seemed like a great match. A co-creator of Westworld at the helm. Hugh Jackman in a leading role. Rebecca Ferguson as a mysterious singer love interest. (Hey, it worked in The Greatest Showman.) Thandiwe Newton just…existing. (I’d watch her in just about anything.) A seemingly intriguing, twisty sci-fi/fantasy plot about memories and a world where all you want to do is revisit better times. Unsurprisingly, that premise seems appealing in year two of a pandemic. Everything looks like it should have come together into a fascinating film that could have joined the ranks of The Prestige or Inception. Now having seen the movie, it’s impossible to draw a positive comparison between it and those Nolan films.
Writing a summary of this movie seems impossible because I can barely give background on anything that happens. Somehow, Reminiscence refuses to obey the rule of “show don’t tell” and tells too much yet nothing at all. There were so many exposition dumps that I was eye rolling by the end every time Jackman’s character Nick over-explained yet another thing. However, I’ll give it a go. There was A War (we know nothing more), and Nick was an interrogator who somehow used technology - never explained how or why it was created - to go through memories and extract the information the army wanted to know. I think. Maybe. Somehow this also then turned into his business, where he works with Watts (Newton) in selling people remembrances of good times of long ago. Oh, also, there is clearly a climate crisis that fully floods major cities. And a drug that apparently you can never become un-addicted to once you get hooked in the first place, the effects of which are literally never mentioned. Confused? Good. You’re where you need to be.
That summary doesn’t even begin to explain how Mae (Ferguson) walks into his life, and that’s because I really don’t even fully know. The movie tries to pile twist on twist on twist on twist when it comes to her that by the time they tried to come around and explain the truth (I think) about her, I didn’t really care. The basic plot had a lot to go on, and already had a bit of goodwill by seeming like a decent twist on what Inception started. What happens when you try to live too much in the past in memories? Could it drive a man insane? Ruin his life? Well, sure, maybe, but then, what if you add a drug lord (trafficking in the same inexplicable drug mentioned earlier), a police investigation, a double/triple agent (I think) and a hit man? Is that convoluted enough yet? No? Okay, we’ll throw in some time jumps and slips back into memories that are not clearly articulated. I expect this kind of thing from someone who was at the helm of Westworld, but it went way too far.
I really wanted to like this movie, and if it had felt like they really committed to the bit, it would have been way more enjoyable. What makes a bad movie still be entertaining is really leaning into the premise full force, but no one seemed to believe in what it could be. Every aspect of the plot seemed only halfway done, and the wrong things were focused on and explained. Somehow, this movie became almost solely about Mae’s history and how what she did affected Nick and the love story that was or wasn’t real, and it turned into a film that became tedious and felt so much longer than it’s just-under-two-hour runtime. Rather than watch Reminiscence, just watch The Prestige and Inception on two different televisions next to each other. I think the effect would end up being about the same.