Sometimes I want to go see a trashy movie that doesn’t make sense but makes you forget what is going on in your world. In other words spending 2 hours just having fun at what ludicrous situations you are seeing on the screen and after reading a few things about “Unforgettable” I decided that was the movie I was going to see. To my surprise it was a lot better than I expected.

I am not, and have never been, a fan of Katherine Heigl and since she plays the very hissable villainess that brought a sort of fun to watching what was in play. She also made rooting for Rosario Dawson very easy.

The set up is slow and plodding because we have seen it dozens of times before but when the two women get into the climatic fight you are completely drawn in. It was if the director Denise Di Novi told the actresses to show the ‘boys’ how a fight should really be done and not to hold back.

With the female director, Di Novi, and a female screenwriter, Christina Hodson, I was sort of surprised, and disappointed, that it really didn’t make a difference, or was smarter, in the approach to both sexes. As always the men are brutal, controlling, while the women are complacent and have backgrounds involving violence.

Tessa (Heigl) is the ex-wife and quickly establishes through her perfect, not a hair out of place, look and actions that she is deranged. She is bringing up her daughter Lily (Isabella Kai Rice) to be the perfect child. It isn’t long before we meet Tessa’s mother Helen (Cheryl Ladd) and see where the pattern of constantly criticizing the child comes from though grandmother is as sweet as can be to Lily.

When we first meet Julia (Dawson) it is the opening of the picture, her face is bloody and she is in a police station being questioned about the murder of her ex-boyfriend (Simon Kassianides) and we go back six months when she has left San Francisco to move to Southern California to live with her fiancé David (Geoff Stults) and get to know his daughter Lily. Almost immediately Tessa gets involved with the new set up claiming her right as the daughter’s mother.

Talking about mothers Cherl Ladd is the mother of all mothers and would be the villain of the piece if Tessa wasn’t so perfect in her craziness and how she sets up Julia from the beginning. Talking about that, computer smarts is becoming more and more involved in movies and though I didn’t quite understand how Tessa manipulated the computer to do what she does it is frightening how unsafe we are in today’s world.

The last 40 minutes of the movie are sit up in your seat and hold your breath time, making this movie a lot of fun though with some very visible violence. Oh, yes, the last minute is a great payoff which I really didn’t see coming though it makes perfect sense.

“Unforgettable” is a trashy movie, really forgettable, but a lot of fun while watching it with good performances by the two female leads.

Movie trailer

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFXIBL617yc