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'The Vow' review

A date night dud, just in time for Valentine's Day

By Geoff Berkshire

Metromix
February 9, 2012

Critic's Rating:

Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum (Credit: Kerry Hayes/Sony)

Channing Tatum as Leo and Rachel McAdams as Paige in ``The Vow.''

Rachel McAdams as Paige and Channing Tatum as Leo in ``The Vow.''

The Vow

Running time:: 104 minutes

Rated:: PG-13

Cast:

Rachel McAdams -

Paige

Channing Tatum -

Leo

Sam Neill -

Bill Thornton

Scott Speedman -

Jeremy

Wendy Crewson -

Dr. Fishman

See full cast

Director:: Michael Sucsy

Genre:: Drama, Romance

Official Movie Web Site:: http://www.thevow-movie.com/

Overall User Rating:: (0 ratings)

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Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are a young married couple living a charmed life as hip artists in Chicago. Until a car accident leaves Paige with massive head trauma and zero memory of the past four years—including every moment she's spent with Leo. Suddenly, Paige reverts to her pre-Leo life as the prim and proper law student daughter of a wealthy couple (Jessica Lange, Sam Neill), while Leo desperately tries to win her back.

The buzz: Pairing McAdams and Tatum in a sappy romance opening right before Valentine's Day sounds smart enough. They're both veterans of Nicholas Sparks hits—she sparked with Ryan Gosling in "The Notebook," which developed a devoted following thanks to the rare chemistry between its stars, and he scored in "Dear John," which was shameless and not entirely unsuccessful in its tear-jerking efforts. While "The Vow" looks like another Sparks project, it's actually very loosely inspired by a real life couple chronicled in the non-fiction book "The Vow: The Kim and Krickitt Carpenter Story."

The verdict: "The Vow" could've been an ideal vehicle to reteam McAdams with Gosling, but you won't find the actor anywhere near material this brain-dead and creatively stifling at this point in his career. So instead we get Tatum—whose range spans streetwise, jock and grunt—awkwardly cast as a sensitive artist type who believes in the purity of studio recorded music and holds his free-spirited wife on a pedestal of perfection. Tatum isn't the only one who doesn't quite fit into the overly fetishized, utterly fake visions of bohemian and upper class Chicago life primarily filmed in Toronto by director Michael Sucsy (HBO's "Grey Gardens").

From Paige and Leo's tribe of hipster friends who look like strangers off the street, to her high society family that never feels related to her or each other (Lange and Neill's pitifully developed roles make it clear why they've both moved to television), every aspect is so off it's surprising Paige doesn't wonder if she woke up in some nightmarish alternate reality. Especially since Leo's non-stop attempts at wooing her are so bizarrely unconvincing. He does a better job explaining how much he cares about his wife to a colleague than he ever does to her (and this is not an intentional character flaw). It doesn't help that Scott Speedman, as Paige's jilted fiancé, has better chemistry with McAdams in just a handful of throwaway scenes. Or that McAdams herself does little in the way of giving Paige a discernible personality either before or after the accident.

"The Vow" is built on cliched but credible romantic notions—love will lead you home, love conquers all, eternal love and all that. But the screenplay—credited to the awful team of Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein ("Valentine's Day" and "He's Just Not That Into You") and the decidedly not awful Jason Katims (TV's "Friday Night Lights")—settles for banal observations like Leo's guiding philosophy that "moments of impact define who we are" and never misses an opportunity to cue up an indie pop song. "The Vow" isn't a sappy movie, it's a movie for saps.

Follow Metromix's Geoff Berkshire on Twitter: @geoffberkshire