Forget Me Not

Tolkien's The Hobbit lays claim to the sub-title There And Back Again, which is a shame as it could very aptly be applied to Me Again, a film that has now acquired Stephen Hopkins as director. Written by Steven Moffat (the writer of shoddily-acted yet strangely entertaining UK sitcom, Coupling), the film began life as a modest British comedy/thriller, before being whisked across the pond and rewritten as a far less modest $75 million American film with Bruce Willis in the starring role. Such highfalutin ambitions went the way of the dodo, however, when Bruce and co-star Diane Lane dropped out last year. Now, cut loose by its high profile stars, Me Again has now floated back to Britain, where Hopkins shall make it into the modest, British comedy/thriller that it was first intended to be. The film recounts the story of a man who wakes up in a hotel room sans memory and in the present of a decidedly lifeless body. The man must then attempt to figure out whether he's a hitman or the undercover cop assigned to stop said killer. On a slight tangent, can someone please, for pity's sake, put an end to the tired and hackneyed cinematic device that is memory loss. Yes, we all know that it's a valid medical condition but, of late, good old amnesia has been a crutch for far too many lazy screenwriters who, quite frankly, should know better. Sure, it worked for Memento but now every kid with a keyboard thinks all you need for a winning script is a swift knock on the head for the main protagonist. Blind Horizon, The Jacket, and Brett Ratner's Traces are just three of many films currently in development that rely on this most tired of devices and we're telling you right here and now that we'll have no more of it. Sort yourselves out and try something more original, like Munchausen's syndrome, instead. Rant over. Me Again is scheduled to begin shooting in the UK this September.