Think of Me

Think of Me follows Lauren Ambrose’s Angela as she attempts to make a life for herself and her young daughter (Audrey P. Scott’s Sunny), with Angela’s ongoing struggles complicated by a variety of outside forces (including a suspiciously helpful coworker played by Dylan Baker). There’s little doubt that Think of Me, for the most part, comes off as a typically subdued character study, with Ambrose’s gritty, consistently captivating performance initially compensating for the expected lack of plot and narrative thrust. Ambrose, along with her young costar, brings a fair amount of authenticity that does, at the outset, alleviate the deficiencies within Wizemann’s screenplay, and it’s interesting to note that Ambrose’s Angela actually becomes more and more unlikable as the film progresses (ie Angela generally goes out of her way to make her life a whole lot more difficult than it needs to be). There inevitably does reach a point, however, at which the thin storyline’s lack of surprises becomes an insurmountable obstacle, with the overly familiar atmosphere ultimately exacerbated by plot developments of a decidedly questionable nature. By the time the neat, incongruously uplifting conclusion rolls around, Think of Me has undoubtedly established itself as a lackluster drama that simply isn’t able to separate itself from its thematically similar brethren.

** out of ****