There are good romantic movies and there are bad romantic movies. The good ones featuring epic love stories rock you to your core, your soul and have the potential to stay with you forever. The bad ones, however, fizzle and burn before the end credits roll. ‘The Vow’ is not a good romantic movie. While epic in its “inspired by true events” concept, it just doesn’t deliver.
The movie is about Paige (Rachel McAdams, ‘The Notebook’) and Leo (Channing Tatum, ‘Dear John’). The meet, fall in love, get married and become victims of a car crash that leaves Leo unscathed and Paige without any memory of their courtship or marriage. Paige wakes from a coma believing she is a law student, engaged to Jeremy (Scott Speedman) and living with her parents (Sam Neill & Jessica Lang) just outside Chicago, not the girl who lives in the city, is an art school graduate and currently a successful sculptor married to Leo. This is the person she has become over the past five years. Thus begins Leo’s battle to re-woo his wife and regain the life they had, before he looses her completely to her past, the only life she remembers.
THE VOW - TRAILER
What had the potential to be a really beautiful and profound love affair based on its true life counterparts becomes a schmaltzy mess, with the depth of a fish bowl. All the clichés are there, and a handful more thrown in for good measure.
The clunky dialogue lacks any true emotion that this story is primed for and so rightfully deserves, meaning the movie lacks melodrama but also any drama at all.
The clunky dialogue lacks any true emotion that this story is primed for and so rightfully deserves, meaning the movie lacks melodrama but also any drama at all.
While any Nicholas Sparks-loving, red-blooded woman will surely gush at this film and its hunky hunky male stars just in time for Valentine’s Day, it’s sure to warm hearts all over and reaffirm those who truly believe in the power of destiny.