Review: "The Vow"

The Vow, directed by Michael Sucsy, and starring Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, opened as the number one movie in North America on February 10th. The film exercised a magnificent marketing campaign which targeted loving couples and hopeless romantics near Valentine’s Day. The movie, which is said to be inspired by a true story, is about a happily married couple whose life gets completely turned around when she receives amnesia after a car accident. The basic story is one which should hold a lot of emotional impact even for the most heart hardened cynic. The plot, however, completely removes all the emotional power and replaces it with trivial and contrived sequences which undermine the entire premise. I got my first inkling that this film wouldn’t be too satisfying when all the characters started with “on the nose dialogue”. Basically, everyone said exactly what was on their mind without a hint of subtlety because, well you know, in case we didn’t get it somehow. Usually this is generally what I consider to be one of those things every film should get right. Bad dialogue I can get past, if the rest of the film makes up for it, but having the characters tell me how they are felling and why they are feeling that way instead of showing me makes me feel like I am being lectured to. It completely breaks my considerable ability for a willing suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, this is not the film’s worst attribute. Once the initial accident happens we are thrown into a world of absolutes. The people in it are just swell! Seriously, I have not seen a film so devoid of flawed characters (aside from stupidity), or characters we care about. The decisions that the characters make are just impossible to buy. Without spoiling plot, there are incidents where she first arrives home without her memory that just make us think Channing Tatum’s character is abundantly stupid. She has no memory of who he is and he wakes up naked and runs into the room where she is to dress himself, and says “whoops, sorry, habit”. This was a cheap giggle for the audience which left most people groaning. The film is full of those “who the heck would ever really do that?”. But aside from the contrived character situations that really have us wondering what’s wrong with this bizarre world run by idiots, the characters have no life to them. I would say the one shining bright spot was Channing Tatum. I think he’s shown he can really carry a movie. We start to care for his character a bit throughout the film, but often enough the story gets in the way of us believing any of it. Tatum seems to be the only one who is really trying. I felt much worse for him in this film than the character he plays. McAdams doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously but I think that has to do with the lines she is supposed to deliver. Jessica Lange, who in my opinion is one of the greatest living actors, is terribly underused. Lange, a former Oscar winner, just came off winning a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her work on American Horror Story has very few lines in the film and would have been a real asset. Her work on American Horror Story is amazingly nuanced with subtle ranges from lovingly sweet to extremely vile that it should be studied by every acting school. Is The Vow a complete failure? I would say absolutely yes, but it feels so much like an episode of Touched by an Angel or a TLC movie of the week that some people might find a guilty pleasure in it. There’s really little to think about in a film which should garner pathos and raise philosophical questions regarding the nature of self, love, and commitment. The jokes always miss the mark and the characters never behave like real people. In the end, it feels like a completely missed opportunity on an incredible and touching premise.