Take a kitten: a sweet, adorable kitten that’s all fluff and string-chasing and adorably not pooping in the litter box yet. Now take that kitten, but it’s been stuffed. It’s still fluffy and adorable, but now it’s in a new way, a stiff, glassy-eyed way; still identical in form, but all the life and the warmth and the pooping has been sucked out of it. “The Vow” is like a stuffed kitten.
I need a drink. You should get one too. This has gotten a bit… weird.
The really amazing thing about the “The Vow” is that it has one foot firmly placed in reality, but, sadly, the other foot is in Hollywood, which is where real things (often) go to die and (not so often) get taxidermied.
“The Vow” recounts the story of Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo’s (Channing Tatum) courtship and marriage, but in a flashback, after a car accident that puts Paige into a coma. When she awakes, Leo discovers that Paige has forgotten everything about him, and Leo has to win her love all over again. The story is amazing, as it is based on the real story of Kim and Krickett Carpenter, who had a similar incident occur. They later wrote a book about it, which is also called “The Vow.” However, the adaptation process has not been kind; any heart the film has is removed to make room for shoehorned Hollywood romance tropes and pandering to hipsters. Like a stuffed kitten.
The movie isn’t a total loss, though. McAdams and Tatum do a great job trying to overcome the weakness of the script, but both of them are painfully, manufacturedly “quirky,” and Tatum has a voiceover so dumb it may as well be printed in Courier font across a soft-focus picture of a Ferris wheel or tree. But they are trying, and McAdams especially does a fantastic job of looking alienated or casting meaningful glances at Tatum.
There are some surprising moments where the film doesn’t take the easy way out or hits upon a charming line or thought from its characters, but it can’t redeem the movie for its need to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and thus can’t really engage at all. You can’t fool anyone with a stuffed kitten.
