THE VOW

Soap Opera on the Big Screen

title: THE VOW
year: 2012
cast: Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum
rating: **

The worst thing is having to sit through the actual vow, a sappy diatribe of overwhelming Hallmark drivel during a quickie wedding ceremony, three entire times: once before Rachel McAdams, playing the perfect girl, loses her memory from a car accident; once after; and the last time right as she’s discovering that perhaps… well that’s cutting to the chase in a story that doesn’t have much of a chase at all – even though the perfect guy, Channing Tatum, having lost his wife to amnesia – the hackneyed device used in every soap opera invented – has to woe her back into his current, and her former, life. McAdams only remembers the stuff before the relationship, shown during a ten minute “flashback” of boy meeting girl and never lacking a single moment of perpetual bliss i.e. the Greatest Hits of unrealistic romance. Jessica Lange and Sam Neill, as the rich parents who don’t understand Tatum’s “lowly” lifestyle as a dreaming recording studio owner... or their daughter's choice to sculpt over law school... add as little to the storyline – which nearly tenses up once she rekindles the spark with a snarky ex fiancé. But this, like everything else, thanks to a dull script and wooden performances (especially Tatum, whose expression never changes), amounts to very little in a flick that even chicks might forget once the end credits roll.