If Mickey Spillane and Gene Roddenberry had a really ugly baby, it would be Reminiscence. It wants to be film noir with its very moody lighting and it wants to be Blade Runner but it’s just flat.
It’s lackluster attempt to be a really big blockbuster left me feeling embarrassed for just about everyone who tried to work around a story of a man (Hugh Jackman) who is hopelessly infatuated by a cabaret lounge singer who’s hooked on the post apocalyptic, water world’s version of designer heroin.
Hugh runs a shop that caters to people who want to relive their glory days or maybe just looking for a set of lost keys. There’s a variation of an isolation tank, called a pod, that allows the client to go back and remember.
There’s 2.5 hours of hell, I mean movie and most of it is Hugh trying to figure out where his dream girl disappeared to. There’s zero chemistry between anyone. The acting is purposefully flat. No real emotion from anyone. It’s as if the director wanted to move pipe cleaner figures around in a diorama making the grey and darker grey tones of every set, the star.
Lines are delivered identically no matter the situation, “Pass the salt” -“There’s only one rule, survive or die, go ahead and shoot me, you’ll never get what’s in my head.” are interchangeable. Cut to a grey room.
Do not waste your time on this unless you’re a glutton for punishment. I wanted to like this but I couldn’t get past the mono-dimensional feel of this stinker.
It gets two stars because I’m being super generous and I save one star ratings for MST3K bombs.