Tired romance ‘Forever My Girl’ goes all-in with precocious kid
OUTLANDISHLY precocious children in movies are such an irritating trope. Ever since a tiny Jonathan Lipnicki prattled on about the weight of the human head in “Jerry Maguire,” a parade of overzealous kid prodigies have appeared onscreen and quickly worn out their welcomes. OK, fine, they’re not all bad. Billy (Abby Ryder Fortson) in Forever My Girl certainly falls on the annoying end of the spectrum; she is the wise-beyond-her-years 7-year-old who spouts off stats about the dangers of riding in convertibles and teaches herself to play the guitar without ever hitting a false note.
That character is hardly the movie’s only offence — the romantic drama is painfully contrived and insistently predictable — but it may be the most difficult to overlook.
Written and directed by Bethany Ashton Wolf, Forever
My Girl actually begins before Billy’s birth, as Josie (Jessica Rothe) is getting ready to marry her high school sweetheart, the fledgling country music star Liam (Alex Roe).
Just as she’s decked out in her wedding dress and touching up her lipstick one last time, she receives word that Liam’s a no-show. He’s left their tiny Louisiana town to start his life of superstardom, so marriage is a bit inconvenient at the moment.
Cut to eight years later, Liam is onstage in a packed arena, sweaty and singing “Don’t water down my whiskey” while adoring fans mouth the words. When he finishes, they chant his name, and his manager sends a flirtatious blonde from the front row up to his hotel room. This was worth giving up Josie for, right? Of course not.
Don’t worry: Liam finds an excuse to return to his home town, where he inevitably comes face-to-face with the one who got away (if you can call someone who still lives in her childhood home “getting away”). She promptly punches him in the stomach, then introduces him to her daughter, Billy. Liam may not be a math wiz, but it dawns on him fairly quickly that Billy’s his.
So begins a by-the-book redemption story for a guy who hardly deserves it. Besides the fact that Liam ditched his fiance without explanation, he acts like a spoiled brat most of the time. He is the type of guy who drinks himself silly on a hotel rooftop, then throws his empty cans to the street below. It is bad enough to litter, but endangering innocent pedestrians? Come on, man.
Josie, meanwhile, is one of those one-dimensional dreamgirls, magically devoid of flaws. Sweet but not entirely spineless, she is a churchgoing single mom who owns a flower shop and does not even get exasperated when little old ladies spend hours paying for their bouquets, one coin at a time.
She deserves better than Liam but is bound to the rules of outdated romance movies, which means she has to wait around for a guy she fell in love with when she was a teenager to grow up.
Of course, the way to her heart is by watching him bond with his newly discovered child genius.
You have to wonder if Liam would be so all-in about selfactualization if, say, Billy were less self-sufficient or more prone to tantrums. But Forever My Girl isn’t going there — that would be far too interesting.
This is a movie that is content sticking to a tired script about a kid who’s exhausting. — WPBloomberg
• One and one-half stars. Rated PG. Contains strong language and mature thematic elements, including drinking. 104 minutes.