Just the fact that "The Vow" was released on a Valentine's Day weekend spells out the film's target audience. But this box-office draw alone can't save this Nicholas Sparks wannabe from being completely forgettable one year down the road.
Supposedly, "The Vow" is based on a real life couple, but what we have here is a prime example of the vague use of the "based on a true story" aspect. This is a "something similar sort of happened like this" story, making the actual story just a jumping point for this terrible screenplay.
Nicholas Sparks film veterans Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams play young, attractive newly-wed couple Leo and Paige. They're basically the ideal bohemian couple, with Paige pursuing a career as a sculptor and Leo running his own recording studio and living the greeting-card life.
Tragedy strikes when the couple stops in the middle of an intersection one night to make out. Their car gets rear-ended by a truck and Paige is sent flying through the windshield in a slow-motion sequence that makes it seem like Zack Snyder took over director duties.
Paige wakes up in a hospital in surprisingly good condition except for one very inconvenient problem: she can't remember anything about her relationship with Leo. Realizing that there's no way for Paige to recover her memory, Leo decides that the best thing to do is make his wife fall in love with him again. Unfortunately, he realizes falling in love the second time around isn't as easy as the first time.
Sam Neill ("Jurassic Park") and Jessica Lange ("King Kong") play Paige's cold, estranged parents who are thrilled by this whole brain damage situation because it means they get their daughter back. They play completely dramatized versions of snobby, rich parents, and I've seen better acting from them both when they were pitted against special effect-based monsters.
"Underworld's" Scott Speedman plays Paige's slick, conceited ex-fiancé, Jeremy, who also takes advantage of Paige's situation. He's the typical chick-flick jerk who is Leo's rival for Paige's affections.
This movie constantly plays out like a dark, cliché-ridden combination of "Meet the Parents" (2000) and "50 First Dates" (2004), with a contrived liberal versus conservative/high-class versus low-class plot less subtle than a daytime soap-opera. That's not to say that screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein ("Valentine's Day") don't try to clobber us with cleverness. For instance, the café where Leo and Paige have their first date is called Café Mnemonic. Get it?
"The Vow" may have its sweet moments and an innocent story about how true love conquers all, but it misses the key aspect that makes for a great romance film: the audience has to fall for the characters. This movie exhibits nothing even resembling a spark between McAdams and Tatum. Even though time is spent through flashbacks to invest us in Leo and Paige's relationship, the terrible writing makes it difficult to see them as a couple deeply in love rather than actors trying to collect a paycheck.
In fact, more chemistry is apparent between Leo and his assistant, making me wish that Leo would forget about Paige and instead get with the woman who runs his business.
Tatum means well, but it's all too apparent that he was cast for looks and not his acting talents as we see him bare-chested as much as possible in this film. He's a good-looking guy and no doubt tries his best with any role he's given, but he has the range of a field goal kicker with a torn ACL. McAdams is a lovely woman and seems like the perfect candidate for this kind of role, but even she can't make the best out of what she is given. We see her character change from an artistic, liberal woman who's willing to marry in an art gallery, to a suburban, tedious conservative who's not even the least bit curious about the five years of memory she lost.
On that note, it makes it more difficult to cheer for this couple when amnesiac patient Paige acts like she doesn't even want to remember Leo.
"The Vow" works as a decent date-night film, but otherwise, it's a completely misguided attempt to attain an emotional response from the audience.