A little old-fashioned movie star charisma and sex appeal spice up the latest from romance novelist Colleen Hoover, “Reminders of Him.”

An overwrought and only slightly less far fetched romantic melodrama than her edgier and abusive “This Ends with Us,” “Reminder” is the beneficiary of nicely nuanced turns by two attractive and engaging leads — horror icon Maika Monroe of “It Follows” and “Don’t Breathe,” and Tyriq Withers of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and TV’s “The Game.”

They make a story of guilt and responsibility, starting over after a tragedy and overcoming legal, ethical and personal misjudgements and oh, intense sexual attraction and extreme affluence tolerable if not wholly palatable.

It’s the kind of romance that measures up to “This isn’t half bad” despite some eye-rolling or just too-obvious plot twists.

Monroe is Kenna, fresh out of prison and on her way back into Laramie when she has the cabbie stop by a roadside memorial. She yanks up the cross with Scotty Landry’s name on it. He’s the guy she writes “letters” to in her journals, letters she relates in voice-over narration.

“Dear Scotty, I know you hated memorials” and the like.

She’s got her pre-prison Daisy Dukes and cowgirl boots on as she rents an efficiency in the Paradise Apartments, a dump that used to be a motel. The owner arm-twists her into taking a kitten in the bargain. Kenna will have to get used to the special needs girl who goes by Princess Diana (Monika Myers) who’s in the habit of barging in wherever, looking in the fridge and taking whatever suits her fancy.

“We can’t hire folks with a record, hon,” is what Kenna hears from one and all as she job hunts. There’s no “starting over” without a job. A sympathetic grocery store assistant manager bails her out.

And the hunky ex-Denver Bronco tavern owner Ledger (Withers) will serve up day-old coffee if that’s all she’s drinking.

Kenna’s past, her big mistake, involved alcohol, a car accident and a tragedy none of those closest to it will ever get over. She’s come here to see her child.

“I just wanna meet the human being that Scotty and I made.”

His parents (Lauren Graham and Bradley Whitford) aren’t hearing that. And Ledger, once he figures out who she is, won’t allow her in their sight.

But as the hunk and the hottie gently collide and flashbacks flesh out their pasts with Scotty, big mistakes and whatnot, we see where this is going and have to decide just how plausible it all is.

Hoover’s edge — the book was adapted by Lauren Levine — comes from the R-rated language and sexuality of her entries in a genre that often has a faith-based or at least a Nicholas Sparks soft and squishy feel.

There’s no prison brutality, but we see Kenna advised by a wisened, butch inmate in the bluntest terms.

“They took your baby from you.” She has to decide, are “You gonna live in your sadness, or die in it?”

The narrative is littered with cute-bordering-on-cloying touches — Princess Diana’s running gag/nickname for Ledger — “Jerk” — jokes about hating music because all the songs are riven with heartbreak (Air Supply as a punchline).

Little Zoe Kosovic is the teeth-achingly-adorable five-year-old, improbably named Diem, at the heart of this tug of war. Ledger’s devoted to his best friend’s child. Can he forgive the woman who took Scotty from him?

The plot is messy, but built on romance-novel tidiness — coincidences and twists that point towards “It’ll all work out.”

But director Vanessa Caswill (Netflix’s “Love at First Sight”) knows where the money is here. Monroe and Withers are showcased to beautiful effect and her stars reward her attentions with inviting performances.

Withers, a former Florida State football player, is Wheaties box-handsome and effortlessly credible as an NFL vet building a mansion in his home town and Monroe has a working class earthiness that serves the role well.

“Why are you so poor?” Princess Diana wonders. Monroe’s Kenna suggests the growing-up mistakes that limited the prettiest girl in school’s horizons.

The picture dawdles. Granny Graham (“Gilmore Girls”) rubs the sharpest edges off her still-grieving mother, Whitford seems out of place in this milieu and little touches like having an alcoholic partner (Nicholas Duvernay, Withers’ real brother) in the bar are just precious.

But the picture plays and Monroe and Withers make us invest in the characters and “This isn’t half bad” makes this a date movie that comes off, romance novel origins be damned.

Rating: PG-13, sexual content, drugs, partial nudity, profanity

Cast: Maika Monroe, Tyriq Withers, Zoe Kosvic, Bradley Whitford, Rudy Panko, Nicholas Duvernay, Monika Myers and Lauren Graham.

Credits: Directed by Vanessa Caswill, scripted by Lauren Levine, based on a novel by Colleen Hoover. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:50