Thursday, April 27, 2017

Movie Review: "Unforgettable" (2017)

Director: Denise Di Novi
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
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When Julia Banks uproots her whole life to move in with her fiance, she gets far more than she bargained for from his psychotic ex-wife Tessa.

"Unforgettable" is the feature film debut of director Denise Di Novi, who has been a famous producer in Hollywood for decades. It is written by Christina Hodson, who previously wrote one of last year's worst, most atrocious films, "Shut In." This movie stars Rosario Dawson as Julia Banks, who has recently uprooted her entire life and career in order to live with her beer brewing fiance David, played by Geoff Stults. David has a daughter named Lily, played by Isabella Kai Rice, who seems to get along with Julia just fine, but you wouldn't really know it because the movie never shows them becoming cool with one another. David also has an ex-wife named Tessa, played Katherine Heigl, who is a complete narcissistic psychopath, though no one seems to notice except for Julia. As Julia tries to become settled in her newfound life as a stepmother and semi-retired website editor, Tessa makes it increasingly more difficult for her, even to the point of criminal action.

"Unforgettable" is pure 'Lifetime movie of the week' trash. We don't mean this in a fun, guilty pleasure kind of way, we mean it in an absolute drivel, total garbage kind of way. "Unforgettable" is full of drama, thriller, and horror genre tropes. The principal characters are beyond terrible, the worst kind of stereotypes you can write for women in any day and age, but especially bad in 2017. Julia is painted as a weak, perpetual victim who lacks the ability to speak up or explain anything cohesively. She lacks confidence in anything she says and immediately backs down when someone else says something dismissing her claims. David is a complete and total moron, and an absentee father and husband-to-be. He constantly says he loves Julia, but never seems to believe a word she says, especially over his ex-wife, who apparently will do and say no wrong because she birthed his child. As for Tessa, she is a narcissistic psycho hose beast, if we may borrow a phrase from "Wayne's World." From the minute she appears on screen with her uber-pointy straight blonde hair and a horribly nasty scowl, you can tell she's up to no good and makes it as obvious as wet water. Heigl doesn't even try to make it convincing, but then again, neither do the writer and director.

This is one of those movies where we become increasingly more infuriated at how poorly and deplorably written the entire thing is, especially when it comes to its idiotic, stupid characters. For example, on multiple occasions, Julia has suspicious things happen in her day to day life that are very out of the ordinary, which makes her paranoid that the past could be catching up with her. If you were worried like she was, wouldn't you have your cell phone handy at every possible opportunity, just in case? Julia, on more than one occasion, leaves her cell phone in the car or out in the open. We understand once, but leaving your phone unattended or lost multiple times? You're just a damn fool. Speaking of the writing, Christina Hodson is off to a horrendous start in her career with her only two films being absolute fecal waste. It honestly pains us to know that one woman wrote this movie and another woman directed it. Is this what they think of all women? That they are either meek, feeble bimbos or manipulative, conniving psychopaths? We want and need to support films written and directed by women, but when what comes to fruition is so consistently stereotypical and so consistently incensed, it's difficult to do when the final products are complete and utter filth.

Watching "Unforgettable" is like being an audience member on Maury Povich where you want to stand up and exclaim "You don't need this bullshit in your life, Julia. You are strong, successful woman! You don't need to deal with an absent lover who doesn't trust you and his deranged, invasive, scheming, bitchy ex-wife!" The only saving grace we experienced watching this movie was being able to openly talk crap about it because we were the only two people in the theater for the last half of it. Other than that, we never felt engaged in the story or with its characters for even a moment, and it was a full-on struggle to not walk out of this steaming shitbox of regressive garbage. The only other person in our theater did just that about 30 minutes into it. We envy that man. Don't waste your money and don't waste your time on this dumpster movie. Rosario, we were all rooting for you and you deserve better.


My Rating: 1/10
BigJ's Rating: 1/10
IMDB's Rating: 4.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%
Do we recommend this movie: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

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