The Vow

Released just four days before the annual love-fest that is Valentine’s Day, “The Vow” is a film that many will describe as the perfect date movie. I respectfully disagree; “The Vow” is not a perfect date movie, it’s only an adequate one. If you’re looking for a perfect date movie, buy or rent a masterfully crafted film such as “(500) Days of Summer” or “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” or maybe even go see the newly released “The Muppets” at your local cinema; I guarantee a fun and magical time with your partner/date out of the last one.

“The Vow” is none of these films; it doesn’t have the heart, the soul or the brain to compete with them. And while it certainly has all the elements of a perfect date movie (the romance, the breakup, the weeping, the laughing), its handling of them will satisfy only the least demanding of audience members. I would say, however, that there’s potential for some back-row smooching and cheeky groping during the film’s plethora of boring moments; just make sure you’re discreet, lest you distract and disturb your fellow movie-goers with your semi-public naughtiness.

“The Vow” is a chick flick, and it certainly pushes all the buttons of one. It is a romance, but it is not a boy-meets-girl story; it is, in fact, a girl-forgets-boy story. The boy is Leo Collins (Channing Tatum, “Haywire”), a hunky owner of an independent recording studio in Chicago. The girl is Paige Collins (Rachel McAdams, “Morning Glory”), Leo’s wife, who spends much of her day in her art studio, blasting loud music as she sculpts lumps of clay. The two have been married for four years and are very much in love, as shown in the opening scene when Leo passionately belts out the lyrics to “I’d Do Anything for Love” to Paige when the song plays on the car radio. Aawwr.

And then, shock horror, something very bad happens to them. One snowy night, as they sit and wait at traffic lights, the couple are rear-ended by a truck. Leo wakes up in hospital with some minor injuries. Paige, however, ends up in a drug-assisted coma and is predicted to suffer some brain damage. When she wakes up, she can’t remember her life with Leo or ever having met him; indeed, when she first wakes up and sees him standing at her hospital bed, she mistakes him for a doctor. It is at that point that the violins begin playing.

Paige’s estranged parents (Sam Neill, “Daybreakers,” and Jessica Lange, “Broken Flowers”) come to the hospital and ask Paige to come back to their home to live with them. Leo, whom Paige’s parents know nothing about, instead asks Paige to stay with him and get back into her normal routine to see if any memories come back to her. Hesitantly, Paige decides to stay with the husband she doesn’t recognise, who quickly becomes determined to reignite his wife’s forgotten memories and make her fall in love with him all over again. Aawwr.

There is potential for an emotionally stirring, dramatically rich story in “The Vow;” we have a woman living with a stranger who is her husband, while the man she loves, ex-fiancé Jeremy (Scott Speedman, “Underworld”), wants her back. The film strives for enthralling, stimulating drama and strives too hard, ultimately coming across as forced, schmaltzy and manipulative. Content-wise, it has all the workings of a Nicholas Sparks novel; unfortunately, its execution is like that of a Nicholas Sparks movie, and one that is most definitely not “The Notebook.”

Tatum and McAdams look very comfortable in their roles, and why shouldn’t they? They’re certainly not unfamiliar with the weepy-eyed romance genre; McAdams starred alongside Ryan Gosling in the aforementioned “The Notebook” in 2004 and alongside Eric Bana in “The Time Traveler’s Wife” in 2009, while Tatum starred alongside Amanda Seyfried in “Dear John” in 2010. Both give performances that are emotionally convincing and admittedly charming, but it’s their characters that do them a bit of a disservice.

Right from the beginning, I disliked both of their characters. Call me a heartless cynic, but their overdone cutesiness, ever-widened smiles and tendency to smell each other’s farts (I’m not kidding) bugged me from the get-go. As a couple, they’re rather obnoxious, which is a definite problem when the film’s concept relies wholly on the audience’s wanting for the couple to get back together. There’s a convincing yearning to Tatum’s “hunk with a heart of gold” performance, sure, but good ol’ potato face just isn’t enough to save the film.

I would say that young women in the audience will find “The Vow” to be pleasurable, but fortunately I’m not a patronising, sexist prick. What I will say is that there is a certain audience for this who will enjoy the film for what it is and care not for what it isn’t. What it isn’t is a passionate, breathtaking tale of heartfelt romance that is as touching as it is riveting. What it is is cookie-cutter Hollywood fluff that is mostly passable for a Friday-night date movie but not for very much else.

4/10