Parents' Guide to Charlie Harper

Examining a broken relationship through the rose-colored lens of memories, co-directors Tom Dean and Mac Eldridge outsmart themselves by using a nonlinear structure. Their Christopher Nolan-style "sliding timelines" approach to Charlie Harper results in a romance that's more likely to be forgotten than treasured. The movie starts with a cerebral tone and the promise of a fresh take on a familiar love story. But as it skips through snippets of Charlie and Harper's relationship—from high school flirtation to post-grad falling in love to committed contempt—it becomes difficult to be fully invested in their romance. Kudos to Dean (who also wrote the film) for creating complex characters, but there's simply too much packed into less than two hours: Charlie and Harper have so many traits, troubles, and reasons to fight that few get enough screen time to resonate. (To be fair, real couples may have plenty of problems at once, so hats off to authenticity, but generally, movie couples need audiences to know which one issue is breaking their hearts.)

Each generation of filmmakers influences the next, and given Nolan's popularity with younger moviegoers, it's surprising that his type of temporal trickery hasn't turned up more often in contemporary romances. But, as judges on reality singing competition shows like to warn contestants when they take on an icon: If you're going to do it, you'd better make it your own. And Nolan isn't the only filmmaker being borrowed from here. The fractured memories of a failed romance inevitably recall breakup classics Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and (500) Days of Summer, two movies that set a high bar for looking backward at love. While Charlie Harper eventually raises an interesting idea—that we may remember a relationship as better than it was—that notion arrives too late to fully explore it. Instead, the film lands on a romantic truth worth remembering: Relationships help us grow, and sometimes a broken heart is the break we needed.