The Vow

Around four minutes into The Vow I looked down at the notes I was making and they read “Why sex in the middle of the road?” “How did he get her permit?” “He looks like a potato”. I was tempted to just make that my review but I will go on.

Paige Collins (Rachel McAdams) and her husband Leo (Channing Tatum) are driving back from the movies when she decides to initiate sex at a set of traffic lights. Most people would perhaps wait until they were home or maybe nip down an alley but Paige goes for it in the middle of a snow covered street. After taking her seatbelt off the car is rear ended by a truck which sends Paige through the windshield in ultra slow motion. Once Paige wakes up in hospital with the smallest scars imaginable, we discover that she has short term memory loss and has forgotten her entire life with Leo. He looks like a confused Mr Potato head and runs away but decides to come back and try to get her to remember their life together (without using any photos, videos, texts or facebook updates etc). His quest is complicated with the introduction of Paige’s stuffy parents (Jessica Lange & Sam Neill) who want their daughter back.



"Hahaha. No but seriously, take it off. You look ridiculous".

Despite picking up slightly towards the end this film had already pissed me off with its stupidity after five minutes. Straight away I had little compassion for McAdams’ character after she decided to try and have sex with Tatum at traffic lights! Why not just pull over to the side of the road if she was that desperate? It’s a ridiculous opening. The slow motion crash takes away the feeling of peril in the accident as it just looks silly. As I mentioned in the opening, McAdams ends up with brain damage but just two tiny, faint scars on her face which are barely visible a month after her accident. Other things that annoyed me were the couple’s wedding which took place in a fucking art gallery, surrounded by douche bags and Channing Tatum’s piss annoying voiceover.

Another inconsistency with real life is that Tatum, while trying to get his wife to remember him, never once tries showing her a picture of them together. The best he can muster is a voicemail in which she is once again horny for some potato loving. If my girlfriend forgot me in a similar accident I might try showing her the text messages sent between us or maybe get her to go on facebook or at the very least show her a photo album or two. Tatum instead resorts to looking confused and then tickles her. When eventually McAdams watches their wedding video she at least feels happy and more at ease with Tatum.

Despite all that is wrong with the film I have to admit that even my cold, dark heart was warmed slightly by the ending, however predictable it is. The ending even contains the obligatory Nicholas Sparks style precipitation, although here at least they’ve gone for a bit of variety in snow. We already got the scene of Tatum all wet outside a café earlier on. Take an umbrella you dick! This scene with McAdams reflection in the window was played purely to tug on the heart strings of emotional women, much like the scene in which Tatum gets his guitar out which made me want to vomit.

Rachel McAdams has a knack for being the best thing about a bad film. She’s done it before in the awful Morning Glory and she was also the best thing in The Time Traveller’s Wife. She can obviously act and I’d love to see her in more roles like that of State of Play or even Midnight in Paris in which she plays a smaller role in an infinitely better film. Channing Tatum completely surprised me in 21 Jump Street but here he is back to being a confused potato in a cardigan. Sam Neill is quite good as the evil dad and Jessica Lange does an equally good job as the stuffy, uptight mother. The remaining cast is filled with annoying hipsters who live in a cartoon world. Tatum himself owns a recording studio which he barely visits while McAdams gave up a law degree to become an artist.

The Vow is nothing more than filler, a smultchy cabbage of a film designed to makes women go ahhh and men turn green. It's predictable and cheesy and the script turns what could have been a sweet and endearing film into 104 minutes of painful nonsense. The Blu Ray box is fucking pink for fuck's sake!

3/10