The Vow

The Vow aims to make you laugh and to make you cry, but sadly accomplishes neither. It tells the tale of a young couple struggling to rekindle their relationship after a traumatic car accident. The wife (Rachel McAdams) loses her memory, and the husband (Channing Tatum) must make her fall in love with him all over again. While this movie appears to have all the perfect ingredients for the classic cry-your-eyes-out chick flick—an undeniably attractive cast, a tragic tale of star-cross’d lovers and Tatum’s abs—it never reaches its potential. The audience aches for more—of everything, and most of all, runtime.

The couple, Paige and Leo, finds themselves strangers. She recalls nothing of their artist-chic lifestyle and even begins to look down on it, because she can remember herself as nothing other than the country club girl she was five years ago. Although this creates awkward tension in moments that once would have been tender, Leo continues to pursue the woman he married; he looks at her longingly, but she returns his gaze blankly—not remembering who he is. She begins to pull away from him, but because it is doesn’t break her heart, it won’t break yours either.

Leo finally forms a plan to woo her, and there are glimpses of the love and intimacy you’re begging to see in these films: genuine laughter as they talk over a box of chocolates and sexy screen time as they go PG-13 skinny-dipping in the lake. But that’s it. There are plot twists and a story line that you want to follow to the end; on the other hand, nothing moves you, and nothing is beefed up the way it should be. The audience is left wanting more of those moments, wanting to see a love that they can root for. There are quite a few intimate kisses and a shot or two of the aftermath, people heavily tangled in sheets. But when you have Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams in the closest thing to a Nicholas Sparks movie as you can get without actually being a Nicholas Sparks movie, there should be the in-between time. That’s the easiest way to add some intimacy, and it is left out.

Yes, you want to know what happens in the end, but you won’t be riding a roller coaster of emotions to find out. The movie just doesn’t draw you in the way it should—the way it could.

—Jamie Kessler