The Vow

There are worse sins for a mainstream film to commit than predictability — the line between “predictable” and “comfortable” can be thin, and an old story can take on new life if executed with some verve — but in The Vow, it really stings. An easygoing, airport-novel weepie, the film starts with a halfway-interesting premise: after a car accident, a free-spirited, city-dwelling sculptor named Paige (Rachel McAdams) loses all memory of her life with her recording-engineer husband (Channing Tatum) and mentally reverts back to a time when she was a suburban, conservative law student about to marry a career-bound classmate (Scott Speedman). The focus is on Tatum’s genially heartbroken Leo, who has to fight for his old life with Paige though she has no idea who the hell he is. His frustration is an engaging emotional hook — what if someone you’ve known and loved for years suddenly became the person she was before she met you? But since we know exactly where The Vow has to end up, it becomes an inexorable progression from the intriguing to the tedious. Once the film exhausts its feeble attempts to mine dramatic juice out of Leo’s plight, it just lies down and dies: the last forty-five minutes are a mind-numbing vacuum, as the various plot contrivances (the uptight parents, the former fiancee) resolve in the way you’d expect, and the movie finds a perfectly anodyne path to its inevitable happy ending.

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2012
Genres:	Romance, Drama
Starring:	Tatiana Maslany, Jessica McNamee, Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, Scott Speedman, Jessica Lange, Sam Neill
Directed by:	Michael Sucsy
Screenwriters:	Marc Silverstein, Abby Kohn, Jason Katims
Rated:	PG-13