Romantically Honest Vow Difficult to Forget
What if you woke up and all memories of your recent life were gone? That’s what has happened to Paige (Rachel McAdams). She was in a car accident with her husband Leo (Channing Tatum), and after a brief coma she has returned to the waking world with no memory of him or their life together. She doesn’t recall leaving law school to become a famous Chicago artist; she has no clue who all these people surrounding her pertaining to be friends are. Most of all, she has no idea why she is estranged from her wealthy parents Bill (Sam Neill) and Gwen Thornton (Jessica Lange) or why her nuptials to childhood friend and lover Jeremy (Scott Speedman) never took place.
Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams in The Vow
© Sony Pictures / Screen Gems
It’s a mess, but one Leo is insistent they can overcome. He pledged to love Paige for all time, promised to help her through all of life’s travails no matter what obstacles might potentially be put in her path. He knows all of his wife’s secrets, knows everything about the events that led to her cutting her parents out of the picture and what exactly it was that casued her breakup with Jeremy. During their marriage, they told one another everything, and now that she’s a blank slate he’s at a crossroads as to whether or not reveal these mysteries or to allow his beloved the opportunity to figure them out for a second time on her own.
I was ready to hate The Vow. The stupid trailer made it look like the bastardized second coming of a second-rate Nicolas Sparks adaptation, the treacle-ridden sap delivered in all the commercials and previews enough to make me vomit thanks to them alone. While I’m a sucker for a good romance as much as anyone, while I’m not above getting my emotions played like the strings on a harp, this just didn’t look like my cup of tea, and as much as I adore McAdams I was fairly positive not even she was going to be enough to save what looked like a melodramatically schlocky mediocrity.
Shows what I know and why no critic worth their salt should ever carry preconceptions into the actual screening room with them, because for all its potential faults and pitfalls The Vow ends up proving to be a solid romance that honestly tugged at my heartstrings. I enjoyed just about every second of it, this story – inspired by a real event – keeping me captivated no matter how many times the script came perilously close to jumping the shark or falling off the rails.
And boy does the film ever come close to doing just that. The wet behind the ears subplot involving Paige’s parents is ripe with cliché, including the moment when Bill quietly comes up to Leo with a look of fatherly caring in his eye and then drops the bomb that his daughter would be better served if he’d consider divorcing his beloved daughter. The reason behind the family’s estrangement is also not particularly inspired (or for that matter interesting), and it only through the magnificent talents of Lange that this moment of honesty rings with any sort of resounding emotional truth whatsoever.
At the same time, I have to admit I more or less fall into breathless rapture with The Vow. Director Michael Sucsy (HBO’s Grey Gardens) knows when to pull back, knows when to use restraint, never allows Rachel Portman (One Day) and Michael Brook’s (The Fighter) lyrical score to overpower the proceedings, and as such does a magnificent job bringing this somewhat soggy story (five different writers get some sort of credit) to life. The movie has a magnet ebb and flow to it I fully allowed myself to become entangled with, everything building to the kind of honest, irresistibly poignant climaxes films of this genre typically eschew.
Then there are McAdams and Tatum. The former is terrific, no surprise there, the actress using all of her talents to make Paige a poignant figure worth caring about. It is the latter that took me by surprise. While I’ve never taken Tatum to task for any of his performances, I can’t say he’s ever bowled me over in a way that’s truly mattered (even in Stop-Loss or Haywire) until now. Watching him here is like Columbus discovering the new world, his freshness, his timid tenacity, the way he can flash a smile only to morph it into a devastating frown, all of it comes together in a way I was completely unprepared for. I adored him in this, and watching him match wits with McAdams was as big a treat as any I could have hoped for.
Their film certainly isn’t without faults and there are indeed flaws aplenty, but as cinematic romances perfect for Valentine’s Day are concerned I’m hard-pressed to imagine one better. This movie won me over, kept me happily entertained all the way through, and while the heroine might be battling partial forms of amnesia I can pretty much guarantee The Vow is one 2012 release I’m going to have trouble forgetting.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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