Universal Pictures is bringing Colleen Hoover’s beloved 2022 novel to the big screen this Friday, March 13, and the early word is in: this one hits differently.
The road to opening day was not always straightforward. Reminders of Him was originally pegged for a Valentine’s Day release, first set for February 13 and then bumped to February 6, before Universal ultimately settled on March 13, giving the film room to breathe away from the crowded romantic competition of mid-February. The decision appears to have been a wise one. With critics and early audiences already reacting ahead of its wide theatrical debut, the film is quietly shaping up to be a genuine moment for the CoHo faithful and a compelling argument that Hollywood is finally learning how to adapt these stories with care.
The film had its Los Angeles premiere on Monday, March 9, at the Hollywood Legion Theater, and by all accounts the energy in the room matched the emotional weight of the material. Lead actress Maika Monroe arrived in a striking red ensemble, drawing significant attention alongside her co-star Tyriq Withers. The ensemble cast, including Rudy Pankow, Lauren Graham, Bradley Whitford, and country music star Lainey Wilson in her feature film acting debut, all walked the carpet alongside author Colleen Hoover herself and director Vanessa Caswill. Singer Noah Cyrus was also in attendance, having contributed an original song titled “Light Over the Hill” to the film’s soundtrack.
Reminders of Him tells the story of Kenna Rowan, a woman who returns to her Wyoming hometown after serving seven years in prison following a car accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty. She left behind a daughter she has never known, a child now in the custody of Scotty’s grieving parents, played by Graham and Whitford. The only person in town willing to extend her any compassion is Ledger Ward, played by Withers, a former NFL player and bar owner who was Scotty’s best friend and has since become a surrogate father figure to little Diem. As their secret romance grows, so does the risk, and the film builds steadily toward a confrontation about forgiveness, grief, and the possibility of second chances.
The critical consensus, still forming, is pointing firmly upward. As of Wednesday, March 11, Reminders of Him has opened on Rotten Tomatoes with scores ranging from the mid-to-upper 60 percent range, making it the highest-reviewed Colleen Hoover adaptation to date. For context, It Ends with Us landed at 55 percent and last year’s Regretting You managed only 29 percent. The improvement is not trivial. It reflects a film that has clearly benefited from Hoover’s direct involvement, as she co-wrote the screenplay alongside Lauren Levine, whose credits include Bridge to Terabithia and the Confess adaptation.
The Associated Press praised the film as a well-crafted and well-acted entry in the Hoover canon. Us Weekly offered that audiences will cry, but that the film ultimately leaves viewers hopeful about what lies ahead for its characters, which is perhaps the most accurate distillation of what Hoover’s readership has always come to the page seeking. Variety described director Caswill’s approach as “tastefully understated,” noting that the film resists the urge to tip into full melodrama, opting instead for a quiet, forlorn plausibility that suits the material well. Caswill, who previously directed Love at First Sight, stages the Wyoming setting with an intimate warmth, allowing the emotional tensions to simmer rather than boil over on demand.
FlickDirect offered one of the more unguarded early responses, noting that tears began flowing less than an hour into the film’s one-hundred-and-fourteen-minute runtime, and that the emotional pull did not let up through the final frame. Screen Rant described the film as inherently watchable, calling it another entry from the Colleen Hoover industrial complex that manages to activate something instinctive in an audience, even when the storytelling mechanics are familiar.
Much of the early enthusiasm has also centered on the performances, and particularly on the chemistry between Monroe and Withers. Monroe, best known to genre fans for her work in Longlegs, steps into deeply different emotional territory here, and the early consensus is that she handles it with grace. Withers, 27, has been on an extraordinary run of late, coming off roles in the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel and the football-themed horror film Him. His Ledger is described in multiple reviews as a soulful and quietly magnetic presence, a gentle giant in an orange pickup truck navigating competing loyalties with emotional intelligence rather than bravado. The chemistry read between the two leads reportedly happened under memorable circumstances. Withers shared in a recent podcast interview that Monroe joined their initial chemistry read remotely from her bathtub, and that he later dressed up as the Lorax on set to diffuse tension during an emotionally grueling shoot. The levity behind the scenes appears to have translated into something genuine on screen.
Lainey Wilson’s feature film debut has also been generating quiet excitement. The country star, who broke out on season five of Yellowstone, brings a natural, unforced screen presence to the ensemble, and industry observers note that she acquitted herself well in front of the camera without the self-consciousness that can often mark a musician’s first foray into acting.
From a business perspective, the film is projected to open between ten and fifteen million dollars domestically against a reported twenty-five million dollar production budget, a modest but potentially profitable launch for a romantic drama with this level of built-in readership. The novel has sold more than six million copies in the United States alone and has been translated into forty-five languages. Even a fraction of that global fan base represents a significant audience primed to buy a ticket.
What makes Reminders of Him feel like more than just the next CoHo title on the Hollywood assembly line is the degree to which the creative team has treated the source material as something worth protecting. Hoover’s fingerprints are on the screenplay. Caswill’s direction keeps the sentimentality honest rather than manufactured. And the cast, anchored by Monroe’s quietly devastating performance and Withers’ warmth, appears to have understood that the audience for this story is not looking for spectacle. They are looking for permission to feel something real.
The film hits theaters nationwide on Friday, March 13. Bring tissues. Leave hopeful.
