Another Colleen Hoover romance

  Reminders of Him, the latest adaptation of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, takes us to Laramie, Wyoming, but the film could have been shot anywhere, a clue that we might have wandered into formula territory.

  The characters in Reminders of Him don't seem rooted in any specific landscape or location; they spring from a blueprint built around romance and obstacles, ingredients that have been seasoned with tragedy.

  Maika Monroe (Longlegs) gives a credible performance as Kenna, a young woman who, at the film's start, is released from prison after serving five years for vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence. Kenna's boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow), was killed in the accident. 

  Guilt-ridden and shaken, Kenna pleaded guilty -- even though the situation turned out to be more complicated than initially suspected. 

   The newly released Kenna has one goal. She wants to see her daughter (Zoe Kosovic), a girl who was born in prison and taken from her. She has never held the child, who’s being raised by Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), Scotty’s unforgiving parents. They've structured a legal arrangement to keep Kenna away from her daughter Diem. 

    That's plenty of dramatic fodder. But what’s a movie such as this without romance? Enter Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a childhood friend of Scotty’s who owns a local bar. Ledger didn’t know Kenna previously because when Scotty was courting her, he was trying to launch a career with the Denver Broncos. When he blew out a shoulder, his athletic career crashed. By the time he returned home, Scotty already was dead.

    All drama hinges on some sort of contrivance; in Reminders of Him, they're awfully transparent. For five years, Ledger has been developing a close relationship with Diem, serving as a kind of surrogate father — at least that’s how he sees it.

     Kenna and Ledger know their relationship will threaten Ledger’s bond with Scotty’s parents and with Diem, who’s as cute as the kitten Kenna's landlady gives her when she moves into the low-rent but  ironically named Paradise apartments.

      At various times, Kenna narrates the film, reading excerpts from the notebooks she began to fill in prison. These consist of letters written to her late boyfriend.

     The supporting characters include a charmingly blunt young woman with Down’s syndrome (Monika Meyers) who Kenna meets when she lands a job bagging groceries.

   The story unfolds in predictably delivered slices that don’t grate on the nerves but unfold smoothly in the hands of director Vanessa Caswill, working from a screenplay by Hoover and Lauren Levine.

     Neither offensive nor deep, Reminders of Him glides past complexities that might have made for a more involving story. The movie follows on the heels of two other Hoover adaptations, It Ends with Us and Regretting You. It improves on the latter but isn't as strong as the former. 

     Hoover’s fans evidently are devoted enough to propel these movies into the profit column, even when they feel, as this one does, more anemic than any melodrama should.