Rachel McAdams’ character gets amnesia after being in a car accident. Her memory reverts back to a time before she met her husband (Channing Tatum), as well as a time before she had made a series of life changes involving a new career, new friends and a distancing from her family of birth. As someone who has moved a few times in my life, I can certainly understand how one’s routines and social circles can change drastically over time, and in the context of a romantic fantasy I was perfectly willing to play along with the conceit of having severed all connections to an earlier age.
What felt forced to me, however, was the antipathy that everyone from her past has toward her new life. Yes, the movies have made a trope of the rich father trying to get rid of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks in order to salvage his daughter’s reputation, but to have every friend and family member participate in the ruse felt inauthentic. Are we really to believe that there is not a single person who thinks she might be happier at least exploring her relationship with her husband, or that there was no one encouraging her to reconnect with her successful art career?
In contrast to this overemphasis on the fantasy of universal social stratification, Channing Tatum’s character underwhelms as the fantasy lover that we expect from this genre. One minute he is hunky and charming and fully invested in sweeping us off our her off her feet, but the next minute he is impatient and overbearing and downright insensitive to the struggle she is facing. In the midst of a story where everyone else engages in a single-minded pursuit of their goals, it felt odd that the romantic hero would so frequently and inexplicably stray from the archetype that we all showed up to see.
Oscar Chances:
Unless the film had an original song that I didn’t notice, there’s not much chance of it showing up on my Oscar lists this year. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It only means that it was designed for that other day in February, the one with the red hearts instead of the red carpets.
As always, check the Tracker Pages in the upper right hand corner of this blog for the most updated predictions in all categories!
My Lamb Score: 2 1/2 out of 5 Lambs
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I had 0 intrest in seeing this movie, I'm surprised at its success, this sounds like an incredibly bland material with a lot of cliches. It's weird McAdams is not doing better films, if she wanted to she would be a good actress.
ReplyDeleteI liked McAdams in The Time Traveler's Wife, but I do think that she's gotten stuck in very similar roles.
DeleteI'm actually not too surprised by the success of this one. It came out right during Valentine's Day, so it had a built in audience--both for date night couples and for people who didn't have a date but wanted something romantic for the season.
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 right here as usual.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dan. I like your comment about being sweet and shiny, which is really all one has to do to sell a good romance flick.
DeleteIt's a "safe" picture, that's all it is. You and I seem to agree 100% on this one...which goes to show that it wasn't made for folks like us. :-)
ReplyDeleteSo true. I do like a good romance every once in a while, but this time I just couldn't get over some of the hurdles.
DeleteI was surprised how well this did at the box office. Proof that you don't need a great movie to have a blockbuster. I will probably check this out down the road as a rental but it certainly looks like your generic romantic drama.
ReplyDeleteThanks Castor. It is pretty generic, and I suspect that one of the reasons that it did so well is simply in comparison to the other February releases which look pretty bad, plus the fact that it was one of the only romantic films out during valentines week.
DeleteBelieve it or not, this movie is based on a true story.
ReplyDeleteI did notice the title card at the end that mentioned that and almost wrote a paragraph about this. However, when I did a little bit of research, I found out that it was VERY LOOSELY inspired by a true story, and it sounded more and more like they changed a lot of things for the film.
DeleteThe real story seems to involve Christians who stayed together because of vows before God (thus the name of the film), which probably scared the studio into thinking it would come across too preachy. But I suspect that the film might have actually been better (albeit less easily marketable to a large audience) if they had stuck more to the real couple's story, as many of the elements that I didn't like were probably new flourishes that they added.
I like my romantic films with a bit more intelligence than I think this one's offering. It's got good leads, but sounds like the script really isn't up to scratch.
ReplyDeleteYour instincts are right. It's not really as good as it could be. It's almost as if they didn't trust the premise enough, so they felt like they had to add extraneous elements to it.
DeleteI'm glad someone else watched this and felt similarly - what was the deal with absolutely NO ONE thinking it was wise for her to get reacquainted with her husband and art career? It just felt wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, because there really is quite a hint of realism in the story with it being based off true events. Now the film goes off in all different directions than the book did, which is unfortunate given that the book is nonfiction. But then again, they wanted to make it into a movie, and how often does a movie based off a book, based off real events hit the mark and appear real?
I personally enjoyed Tatum's performance in The Vow over most of his past performances. I liked the character and really felt sorry for him more often than McAdam's character, despite her being the one to suffer memory loss.
Good review!
Thanks Kristin! At one point I thought that the sister might play the realistic role, since she seemed to like Tatum a bit more than the other characters, but that never really developed much.
DeleteOverall I probably also felt sorry for Tatum's character much more than McAdam's, as she was going back to a rich lifestyle and everyone seemed so focused on winning her over. But the moments where Tatum lost his cool kind of ruined it for me a bit, and made the film a bit more realistic, but also much less romantic.
This is the first review I've read on your site and I really enjoyed it. I think the odds of this one winning an Oscar are probably right around the odds of me actually seeing it. I know Tatum generally gets no respect, but I root for the guy. and McAdams? Well, she's great.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the follow, by the way. I genuinely appreciate it.
Thanks for stopping by! You're right that this one just isn't in Oscar contention (not that many things are that get released in February, of course).
ReplyDeleteGreat to meet a fellow LAMB!