114 min | PG-13 | March 13, 2026 | Universal Pictures
Colleen Hoover’s best adaptation is still just a Colleen Hoover adaptation.
Reminders of Him is a straightforward adaptation of a book written to be adapted into a movie. Vanessa Caswill directs with restraint, letting the story unfold without the melodramatic excess that sank previous Hoover adaptations. The result is competent and watchable. It is also exactly what you expect from the first frame to the last. Kenna gets out of prison, Kenna wants her daughter back, Kenna encounters resistance from people who blame her, Kenna finds unexpected love. The beats arrive on schedule.
The performances exceed their mandate. Tyriq Withers brings a quiet gravity to Ledger that the screenplay does not fully deserve, finding layers in a character who could have been a simple love interest. Bradley Whitford turns the custodial grandfather into something more complicated than the obstacle the plot requires him to be. Maika Monroe holds the center capably, though the script constrains her to a narrow emotional register. Lauren Graham does what she can with a role designed primarily to generate conflict. The ensemble lifts the material above its blueprint.
The strongest performance in the film belongs to neither actor nor director. Tim Ives shoots Alberta standing in for Wyoming with a photographer’s eye for landscape as emotional state. The wide shots of empty plains and distant mountains are simultaneously stunning and despair-laden. The kind of vistas that make you want to set them as your desktop background and never actually live there. The land mirrors Kenna’s situation perfectly. Beautiful, vast, and offering very little shelter.
The film leaves you wishing for a better functioning criminal justice system, though that is probably not the point Hoover was making. Caswill and her cast deliver something respectable out of familiar materials. The adaptation is faithful, the performances are strong where they need to be, and the landscapes do heavy emotional lifting. It is the best Colleen Hoover movie yet. That bar remains low.