Dingdong, Marian deserve better than ‘Remember’s’ manufactured mush

Hot on the heels of 2023’s “Rewind,” Star Cinema’s “Remember”—also starring Dingdong Dantes and Marian Rivera, and helmed by Mae Cruz-Alviar—arrived last Wednesday with lofty expectations. Instead, it’s a missed opportunity that suffers from a bloated credits roll of corporate financiers and “associate” producers, proving once again that a kitchen crowded with too many cooks rarely plates a feast. 

Before their fiercely loyal fanbase drags us to the digital guillotine for our “impertinence,” let the record show we have consistently championed Dingdong and Marian’s recent thespic triumphs on the big screen. 

We heaped praise on Dingdong for his slam-dunk bid for dramatic respectability in “Seven Sundays,” “Sid & Aya: Not a Love Story” and “Only We Know”—where his soulful May-December pairing with Charo Santos-Concio nearly topped our 2025 year-end list, narrowly edged out only by JM de Guzman’s tour de force as a hapless alcoholic in “Lasting Moments.” Likewise, we applauded Marian’s gutsy, principled turn in her Best Actress-winning Cinemalaya 2024 entry, “Balota.” Alas, even screen royalty isn’t immune to the oldest rule in show business: An actor is only as good as his last film.

Truth be told, there’s not much worth remembering about “Remember” other than its postcard-pretty Canadian backdrop—specifically Quebec, whose official motto, “Je me souviens” (I remember), serves as a convenient anchor for its musings on memory and keeping the faith (“tiwala lang”).

Framed as a faith-based tearjerker with supernatural undertones (enter Kyle Echarri as an overgrown Santo Niño/guardian angel figure), the story follows down-on-his-luck architect Joseph Castillo (Dantes) and his estranged wife Ria (Rivera) as they maintain the illusion of an intact marriage for their 9-year-old daughter, Ella (Zia Grace). Stricken with a fast-moving degenerative illness that triggers seizures and memory loss, the matchmaking child is running out of time for a transplant.

(Image: Remember Dingdong)
Dingdong Dantes as Joseph Castillo

(Proceed with caution for some spoilers here.) While Ria tracks down Ella’s married Caucasian biological father—the result of a one-night stand—Joseph scrambles to stage a Santacruzan to grant his stepdaughter’s fervent wish to march, weaving memory and prayer into a last-ditch effort to heal old wounds and save her life. 

Make no mistake: We don’t mind sitting through unapologetic schmaltz, especially when executed with the practiced hand of a Cathy Garcia-Sampana. Derivative though her blockbusters (“Meet, Greet & Bye,” “Hello, Love, Again”) may be, they remain expertly calibrated contrivances—powered by urgent pacing, well-earned emotional upheavals, perfectly timed humor and an uncanny ear for Filipino pop culture. She coaxes career-best portrayals from actors stuck in trite, emotionally manipulative situations (like the latest JoshLia dramatic caper, “Always Yours, Never Mine”), feeding Filipino moviegoers’ insatiable appetite for domestic drama.

Then there is the matter of the distracting wig. In Garcia-Sampana’s films, questionable hairpieces aren’t merely requisite stamps of the director’s branding; they serve a clear narrative purpose—marking the passage of time or acting as a visual shorthand for personal growth and maturity. 

Plopping an obvious, ill-fitting wig atop one of Philippine cinema’s loveliest faces for most of the running time, however, defies logic—leaving you to wonder whether Ria has as deeply estranged a relationship with mirrors as she does with her husband. Be that as it may, much of the film’s manufactured mush and increasingly annoying comedic zingers from its supporting cast feel just as fake as the wig foisted on Marian.

Later, we also learn that Joseph—who’s infertile, not sterile—manages to father a child. But after all the narrative stretches, you get the feeling you’re being taken for a ride.  

Equally hard to ignore is the dated staging of the leads’ unabashed ululations of grief. In two successive scenes, Marian and Dingdong drop to their knees before their daughter’s prospective donor to plead for mercy—a brand of flagrant melodramatic excess we thought had been retired back in the 1960s and ’70s. At that point, we wouldn’t have blinked if local show biz’s nastiest screen enablers, in the vein of Celia Rodriguez, Odette Khan or Bella Flores, had materialized onscreen to give the Canadian actor a pat on the back or a brisk thumbs-up for his perfectly timed slap.

To be fair, the brisk Quebec winterscape offers viewers a refreshing escape from the humid visuals of Philippine-set stories. But scenic snowdrifts and a well-meaning premise do not make a memorable movie.

As the old adage goes, the road to hell—or at least an unsatisfying two hours—is paved with good intentions. More than that, Dingdong and Marian deserve far better material than this—and frankly, so do the moviegoers asked to “tiwala lang” through every contrived tear.