Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams) are the perfect couple. They enjoy the sort of idyllic, laidback marriage that is comprised of cool friends, blueberry pancakes and monthly skinny dips. But after a tragic car accident, Paige inadvertently loses her memory and struggles to recognize Leo as her husband, leaving the latter to resort to desperate measures to win back the love of his life.
Despite being inspired by true events, the premise for The Vow reads more like a modern day spin-off of The Notebook and like that film (which coincidentally also starred McAdams), it thinks it’s engaging with tear-jerking melodrama when actually all it does is crank up the cheese to foul-smelling levels.
Need some examples? You know the disapproving in-laws who usually crop up in these kind of films and threaten to snatch their daughter away from the hapless male protagonist? Present and correct. You want a bit more queso with that? Then have your amnesiac character forget her husband yet fall for her back-stabbing weasel of an ex (Scott Speedman). If Robin Williams showed up as a beardy father figure, you’d have a roll of Double Gloucester on your hands.
Writer/Director Michael Sucsy lives up to his last name by delivering a film peppered with slow-motion hugs (no, really) and a script that is insipid, uninspired and just plain sucks (“I’m not the old me… I’m just me!”). It is lines like these that make you think less of The Notebook and more of 50 First Kisses.
But even this little clunker of a romantic drama is not without its saving grace, namely the central pairing of Tatum and McAdams. The latter is endearing and upsetting in equal measure as the amnesiac wife who is unwittingly throwing away her marriage before the doleful eyes of her husband. Tatum, on the other hand, is taking a well-earned break from playing soldiers and GI Joes, although he has yet to learn how to convey differing ranges of emotion, let alone deliver his lines without mumbling incomprehensibly. But while he may be fast becoming the new Keanu, he does share loveable chemistry with his female co-star: the skinny dipping scene in particular is the film’s most pure and touching moment.
Still, if you are in the mood for a movie about how loss of memory can tamper with the forces of true love, then download Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Seriously, you can do better than this.
2/5
The film may be entirely unafraid of predictability, but it’s sweet, shiny and well acted; essentially it delivers exactly what it says on the box. It also helps that Tatum and McAdams are good here as well, but nothing that they haven’t already done before. Good review. Give mine a look when you get the chance.
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