The Vow

The Vow is one of those movies I knew from the trailer that I would end up seeing simply because Channing tatum is one of my wife's favorite actors that she always wants to see in whatever movie he is in. With it being a chick flick it is one of those movies I get to go to because I drag her to just as many of the guy type movies that are not always up her alley. The Vow was pitched to us in the trailers as being a movie where after a car accident Paige wakes up from the medically induced coma only to have memory loss in which the last four years of her life is all blank to her. Including the fact she no longer remembers her husband let alone even knowing him. So Leo the husband sets out to make her fall in love with him all over again. While this is what the trailer makes us feel what the movie is about, unfortunately the movie has a sad, depressing feel throughout and each time you think things are finally going to turn around and not feel so depressing you will be disappointed because it never happens.

Channing Tatum in the role of Leo, who is telling the story of how the moments in life are what can change everything in just an instant.Tatum shows a lot of potential and performs admirably as Leo with what he is given. In the end, while the audience feels sorry for him and everything he is put through because of this tragedy, we really get no depth to his character. Leo seems to end up being nothing more then a nice guy and not much else. Rachel McAdams in the role of Paige is given a lot more to work with and she definitely takes advantage of that. We are giveng a full range of emotion to see from her character and McAdams takes on the challenge well. McAdams gives us a performance that we really feel sorry for her as she is trying to make do with putting back together her life. The supporting cast for The Vow do a decent job and yet I really wish there were even more depth to the auxillary characters.

The story for The Vow just did not work for me. The overall premise of a wife losing her memory and not remembering her husband and him going to all the lengths he can to have her fall in love with him all over again. I think with this the screenplay could have gone all sorts of ways and I feel that they went one of the worst ways possible. The Vow ends up being a somber movie that you feel has plenty of moments throughout where the entire mood of the movie can change to giving the belief of true love can overcome the challenges, yet this never seems to come about. With a movie that comes out just before Valentine's Day and with it having the feel of being the ultimate true love movie you want to leave feeling like love conquered, but that never happens and it truly made the movie suffer. With the Vow being inspired by something similar that happened to a real life couple it was a good concept. I felt that rather on focusing on how the relationship could be rebuilt between Paige and Leo, instead the screenplay decided to focus more on a lot of family drama that in my summation really made the movie have no romantic chick flick feel to it.  I think that if they would have spent more to being a little closer to what actually happened to the real life couple this would have greatly helped the overall feel of the movie.

With the struggles that the story had it really hurst what would have been one of the stronger aspects is the chemistry between McAdams and Tatum. The chemistry is so strong between them when they are on screen together during the moments of their marriage before the accident. It is during these moments where we end up caring the most about Leo and Paige. During the rest of the movie the chemistry is awkward between them becuase they really do not know how to be on screen with each other an not have that spark that even shows up when Paige has no memory of Leo. This spark that still shows on screen to the audience and because of that it makes everything less believable because the audience sees the chemistry spark and want to see them back together. Rather then using this spark to build happy feelings with the audience and toward them getting back together they ignore the spark and give us this sad deptressing movie.

The Vow was a huge swing and a miss in the chck flick category. While McAdams was strong and controlled in her role, Tatum's characters was very superficial and we were not given very much from his character. Not only did the story have a lot of potential and the chemistry was there, it was the execution of the story that made the chemistry just not work. The Vow ended up being a depressing movie that left you going "Really?" that is why I am giving the Vow one and a half cukets of popcorn out of five. This is definitely a movie that I would avoid, but if you wanted to find a movie to watch with a significant other that can fall in that chick flick category I would definitely recommend checking out my review for Crazy, Stupid, Love and look to rent that one.

-The Movie Man