By Taylor Jensen/reporter
It’s hard to accept that a nude Channing Tatum does not make a good movie, but it doesn‘t.
The Vow is the story of a man who wants to regain the love of his wife, who has severe memory loss after a car accident. Tatum plays the devoted husband Leo, and Rachel McAdams plays his increasingly frigid wife, Paige. The movie opens with a slow-motion shot of Paige going through a windshield. Leo then narrates a few randomly placed flashbacks of their relationship.
Photo courtesy Spyglass Entertainment
The first meeting of the free-spirited, artsy-girl Paige and the fedora-wearing, record producer Leo is neither realistic nor romantic. After the wreck, Paige has no memory of her life as a successful artist or with her husband. She revolves into her younger self who remembers only her love of law school, her parents and her ex-fiancé. Paige not only has no memory of her wedding vows to Leo but no memory of him whatsoever. For a movie based on true events, it is all so convenient.
Leo spends the rest of the film trying to bring back her memory with different declarations of his love. Paige, who needs proof of their marriage before even returning home with him, never opens fully to her new life and instead constantly tries to return to the past she does remember. Leo’s devotion and patience remain strong, however, though Paige turns him down at every opportunity. Because of this, Leo can sometimes seem pathetic, and moviegoers will want to violently shake Paige for not trying to remember her true self.
None of the characters in this movie are complete, including Paige’s parents played by Sam Neill and Jessica Lange, or her ex-fiancé played by Scott Speedman, who just takes up space. Not much was learned about even Leo, other than he records music, his parents are dead and he really loves Paige.
Romantic movies are different from cute movies, and this, at best, is cute. The point is clear: Love might conquer memory loss … but it could take a while. In real life, love conquers tragedies every day. Hollywood then adds family drama, pointless flashbacks and corny lines like “I wish I could love the way you love me.”
The point is if I ever wake up without my memory, and the doctors tell me I’m married to Channing Tatum and he loves me unconditionally … I’m just going to go with it.
