Remember when amnesia was fun? When Goldie Hawn, say, or Fred Flintstone would get hit on the head, forget their identity and exhibit a whole new personality?
Those were simpler times. In the last act, once the premise had been squeezed dry, our hero(ine) would get hit in the head again, and those memories would come flooding back.
The first part is the same as it always was in this week's Hollywood Valentine gift, The Vow, except this is one big, fat schmaltzy drama (albeit one that can't resist a few jokes about floral arrangements of forget-me-nots).
For those who haven't seen the tell-all trailer, the premise is that Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams are Leo and Paige, an impossibly-cute young married couple in Chicago. One snowy night, they get into a car accident that leaves her minus her last five years of memories -- including all memory of being married to a guy with killer pecs (which are on full display in the movie).
Now, I don't claim to be a judge of man-flesh, but I heard enough exclamatory noises from women at the screening to suspect that if one woke up from a coma to discover she was married to Channing Tatum, the first words out of her mouth would probably be, "Awesome!"
Not so in The Vow. Leo, who doesn't know much about Paige's life pre-Chicago, has never even met the evil, rich parents from whom she'd been estranged (Jessica Lange and Sam Neill). Said parents swoop back into Paige's life alongside her hospital bed, eager to take her back to the life she left behind, as a law student, engaged to a smug, oily attorney named Jeremy (Scott Speedman, making a pitch to become the James Spader of his generation).
And she likes her old life. Leo -- who married a free-spirited artist with whom he accumulated a bunch of eccentric friends who wear funny hats -- suddenly finds his Paige has become "a sweater-set, mojito-drinking sorority girl."
Paige, for her part, sifts through photos, videos, etc. of herself and hardly recognizes the flake she'd apparently been the past five years (she'd even been -- horrors! -- a vegetarian). The contrast between the old Paige and Leo's Paige is so stark, you begin to suspect she'd been hit on the head back then, too.
But there's a secret behind her earlier life change -- one so banal it hardly seems worthy of reinventing oneself over.
"Inspired by" a true story (which is to say, almost completely made up), The Vow suffers from the certainty of its conclusion. You just know Paige is not going to dump Leo for Jeremy (sorry Scott, but Tatum makes you look like a girl).
More importantly, the fans The Vow is explicitly tailored to wouldn't stand for it.
The demographics of The Vow could not be more obvious. In contrast to many a movie in which the leading lady barely keeps her clothes on, Tatum is the one required to film scenes more or less in the altogether. By contrast, the most revealing thing McAdams wears is a Chicago Cubs hoodie.
So, yep, guys, consider The Vow payback for the Super Bowl. Valentine's is around the corner, and you can file seeing The Vow under Things We Do For Love.
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