Nicholas Sparks Did Not Write This Movie
The Vow is a tacky, sappy romance that could have been (but wasn't) written by Nicholas Sparks, an impossible-to-avoid comparison given that its two stars are Sparks alumni (be sure not to see The Notebook and Dear John). On the surface, The Vow may seem gushy and sweet; but at its heart, it's Michael Bay for the estrogen set, a cynical business decision based on the premise that women will pay any amount of money to be made to cry. And the men who love/like/tolerate them will cheerfully be dragged along, if it seems like "Bon Jovi" might be in the near future.
The sticky pablum begins with a declaration that the events are based on a true story. "Based" is a term that we should interpret with the utmost generosity because, in real life, the type of amnesia depicted would make for a bizarre, dark experience for everyone involved. It's a story that, in the hands of David Lynch, would make for surreal black humor, even with the requisite happy ending. That is a movie I want to see.
Don't get me wrong: I want to see a coma story end well. But traumatic brain injuries are serious business, existing as they do at the very limit of the human experience. A refusal to acknowledge this is incredibly diminishing to the actual humans, if they do in fact exist.
The Vow is as straight-forward and sunny as it gets: After five years of blissfully happy marriage, the improbably good looking hipsters Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) get in a car accident. When Paige awakes from her coma, she has no recollection of ever having met Leo. She no longer remembers how to sculpt, and she reverts to the much younger version of herself -- the preppy law student who wasn't estranged from her uptight parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), the one who was in love and engaged to the mildly smarmy Jeremy (Scott Speedman).
Jeremy is happy to pick up where they left off, and Leo is annoyingly resigned to all this. He cheerfully sets about winning her back, even as she dons sweater sets and an attitude.
Rachel McAdams is much more believable as a prep than a bohemian art type -- as is Channing Tatum. The fact that G.I. Joe is supposed to own an independent recording studio would be laughably absurd if there weren't so many other outlandish things going on.
The weirdest thing about The Vow is that it fails to answer the questions on everybody's minds: How icky would it be to have a husband that you're not attracted to? What about sex? How discombobulating is it when six-plus years of a life just vanish? This movie doesn't care about these less cozy aspects of severe amnesia. It's more concerned with preposterous dialogue and Channing Tatum's naked ass.
Trust me, Safe House is your best bet for a VD movie this year. After all, nothing stirs the blood like killing a man with your bare hands.
