Unforgettable ** (2017, Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults) – Movie Review

Katherine Heigl stars as the jilted Tessa, who sets out to make life hell for her successor and replacement Julia (Rosario Dawson), her ex-husband David (Geoff Stults)‘s new live-in lover and soon-to-be fiancée.

Julia is now living in comfortable style with David and the ex-couple’s young daughter Lily (Isabella Kai Rice). However, Julia has had an abusive relationship with Michael Vargas (Simon Kassianides), but his restraining order has just run out. Julia has failed to tell David about this.

Tessa keeps popping up at Julia’s place as the ex from hell. Tessa might be nutty – she is – but her mother (Cheryl Ladd) is even nuttier.

That’s it for the essential bits of the plot and characters of this female-centric thriller. It goes reasonably well for its first half, but it plunges downhill rapidly in the second 50 minutes, as it gets repetitive, boring, unbelievable and overheated in turns. When it tries to get violent or sexy, it loses all its credibility. As an erotic thriller, it sucks.

Classy long-term producer Denise Di Novi makes her debut as film director and clearly wants to bring on a thing of class, but she can’t and doesn’t. Even Caleb Deschanel can’t make it look noir scrumptious. It just looks cheap and trashy most of the time, which admittedly is kind of suitable for the material.

It is watchable and some fun in its junky trash thriller sort of way, turning into a a campy farrago, and a hoot if you’re in the mood, but maybe not quite enough to make it worth while. Heigl and Dawson try real hard to make it work, giving it more than it is worth. The other performers aren’t really much help.

Di Novi says: ‘We have thankfully come to a point in time where enough female-driven movies are working at the box office that we can expand upon the stories that we’re telling.’ There is an insistent idea as you watch that this is intended to be a feminist chick flick, with its two strong female roles, and weak roles for the men. If so, this unfortunately has backfired on Di Novi, as good intentions pave the way to hell in the movies, as elsewhere. It’s just the hell hath no fury like a woman scorned idea, which is hardly very progressive.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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