The Vow (2012)
Directed by Michael Sucsy
Happy young married couple Paige and Leo are, well, happy. Then a car accident puts Paige into a life-threatening coma. Upon awakening she has lost the previous five years of memories, including those of her beloved Leo, her wedding, a confusing relationship with her parents, or the ending of her relationship with her ex-fiance. Despite these complications, Leo endeavors to win her heart again and rebuild their marriage.
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21 films that influenced The Vow
What critics say influenced The Vow
Yes, that should remind you of “50 First Dates,” and yes, that should tug at your heart anyway.
Many questions and apologies ensue, akin to a Nicholas Sparks movie somehow not based on a Nicholas Sparks novel or 50 First Dates stripped of its awful jokes, leaving only corny gestures and sporadically convincing heartache intact.
Writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, two of the folks you can blame for Valentine's Day , attempt to put a serious spin on 50 First Dates , while director and co-writer Michael Sucsy (HBO's Grey Gardens ) attempts to bring a yuppie catalog to life.
But it might have been adapted from the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy "50 First Dates," or made up by somebody's boyfriend as an excuse for why he forgot Valentine's Day.
If the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore chuckler "50 First Dates" had been recast as a romantic drama and produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network, "The Vow" might have been the result.
At least one unfunny comedy (the 1940 William Powell-Myrna Loy vehicle I Love You Again) and one unmoving drama (the 1991 Harrison Ford vehicle Regarding Henry) have been built around the premise of amnesia threatening a marriage.
The writer-director, Michael Sucsy, is probably not old or smart enough to have seen Greer Garson and Ronald Colman in Random Harvest, Mervyn LeRoy’s 1942 masterpiece about love and amnesia, but to a ripe old movie buff like me, The Vow brings back warm memories.
There's no close-up of the marquee, or of the posters on the street, to indicate what they've just seen, but here are some suggestions: Memento, Regarding Henry, Random Harvest, I Love You Again, any of the Bournes.
At least one unfunny comedy (the 1940 William Powell-Myrna Loy vehicle I Love You Again) and one unmoving drama (the 1991 Harrison Ford vehicle Regarding Henry) have been built around the premise of amnesia threatening a marriage.
There's no close-up of the marquee, or of the posters on the street, to indicate what they've just seen, but here are some suggestions: Memento, Regarding Henry, Random Harvest, I Love You Again, any of the Bournes.
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Neill has also played opposite oversized creatures, although in neither of his Jurassic Park adventures did he have to wrestle with the kind of dialogue he's forced to utter during The Vow. Watching Neill in this movie, I felt the same surge of sympathetic embarrassment I suffered while watching Laurence Olivier in The Betsy.
Unless it is genuinely helping to inform the viewer of a character's internal self and values, as it does in, for example, 1986's "Stand by Me," it usually comes off as a screenwriter's lazy way to establish information by telling rather than ideally showing.
Tatum and McAdams even go on a date to trendy Café Mnemonic, which is about as subtle as if Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had hung out at Club Lunesta in "Sleepless in Seattle."
It’s like that bit in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray tries to recapture the spontaneous wonder of one glorious day with Andie MacDowell, but she doesn’t realize they’re doing reruns and is completely creeped out.
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She's an artist, and he owns a recording studio; as Leo rambles on about the soulfulness of Scotty Moore's guitar picking on "Mystery Train," you can almost hear the screenwriters begging for street cred.
The Vow takes place in Chicago roughly as urgently as The Third Man takes place in Vienna, excepting that Vienna was there used as a symbol for the disunity and confusion of post-war Europe, while Chicago - and I say this as one whose love for that city can not in any way be called into dispute - is just a big American city that is functionally indistinguishable from most of the other big American cities.