Unforgettable is the newest in a long line of what I call the smutty thriller genre. It started in the 90s, with films like Fair Game and Single White Female and has seen a resurgence with When The Bough Breaks and The Boy Next Door among others. Of this genre, Single White Female is the best made of them and The Boy Next Door is the most fun (although how much of that was intentional is questionable.) However, I'm not here to compare movies (ignore the fact that I just did.) Unforgettable is pretty awful and yet...it could have been kinda, sorta fun but writers Christina Hodson and David Johnson and director Denise Di Novi are too lazy to make that much effort. They instead opt for a thriller in which not much happens and then wimp out at the end by making even the throw down that the film has been leading up to insignificant. If you're going to lead up to this, at least make it count.
The film stars Rosario Dawson as Julia, a too-perfect blogger who is married to David (Geoff Stults, giving a performance so bland that it literally took the taste out of my mouth as I was watching it.) However, Julia meets Tessa (Katherine Heigl,) David's ex who is evil, but not evil enough to make it threatening nor comical. In fact, the movie screws up being fun bad by introducing a comically evil character in Julia's ex (Simon Kassianides) and then showing him only in brief cutaways and one scene towards the end. Kassianides's performance, mixed with the terribly undercooked screenplay, all but turn this guy into a Looney Tunes villain but he's not on screen long enough to be that funny and when he is fully introduced, the scene is in such poor taste that it makes it hard to even laugh at him.
This is not to mention that the film is told in flashback, taking away any suspense from an already completely predictable story. Seriously....giving away how this all transpired in the opening scene would get someone a failing grade in a college level screenwriting class.
This doesn't even begin to bring up the fact that plot elements are introduced that make no sense and amount to nothing. At one point, Lily, David and Tessa's daughter, is talking to a mysterious man at a market. This is brought up later by having Julia go "who was that man you were talking to at the market?" and Lily replying "I don't know." Why even have that scene if you're not going to do anything with it?
Then there's Cheryl Ladd as Tessa's equally uptight, cruel mother. Ladd is at least attempting to give a fun, campy performance but the script gives her nothing to do. She's mean but why and what significance should that serve? The only thing I can think of is to give Tessa some sprinkling of sympathy but then that takes away from the fun of watching this woman ruin her ex's new lover's life. Seriously...there's such a disconnect between the actors, the screenwriters and the directors that it makes everything jarring. Heigl feels like she studied the work of someone like Bette Davis without understanding what made her performances great, Dawson seems to think she's in a Douglas Sirk melodrama, Stults isn't doing anything, Di Novi is directing this like a made for TV Christmas drama, Hodson and Johnson seem to be writing a horror film and that's not even to mention Whitney Cummings as Julia's trustworthy, wise cracking friend who gets not one funny line of dialogue, but plenty of attempts at them.
Yet, at the end of the day, Unforgettable sets itself up for a sequel as if that will ever happen. There's no reason to see this film. If you're going to make a film with this ludicrous a premise, run with it and have fun. If you're going to direct any film, work with your actors in a way that makes sense. If you're going to bring up plot elements, make them worthwhile. Most of all, don't be this mind numbingly boring.
(1/2 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for sexual content, violence, some language and brief partial nudity.)
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