The Vow (2012)

The Vow, the 'true' story of how after a car accident a woman loses 5 years of her life from her memory. This means she doesn't remember her husband, her job, her house, her friends, nothing. You see, it was a little after her memory remembers that she fell out with her parents, dropped out of law school, met her husband and formed her new life. After losing her memory, her husband tries everything he can to help her remember, and when that looks unlikely, he simply tries to win her over once again. The film has Rachel McAdams in it (who I normally don't mind) and Channing Tatum (who I normally do).

The good news is that I don't actually dislike Channing Tatum in this film. This is almost certainly due to the fact that he plays a character who runs a music studio, and when asked what the point is, after all, you can record good quality stuff on your laptop, he launches into a speech about heart, feeling and atmosphere. As someone who used to work in an independent record store, and who now works in a chain record and DVD store, I can attest to the fact that smaller, independently run stores, whilst more expensive perhaps, are infinitely better to shop in, they provide atmosphere, new experiences, and they help develop you socially in ways you simply don't realise. So because of this I could identify with him, felt bad for him and actually liked him too.

The film itself is quite MOR, it didn't offend me enough to feel much of anything about it, but it failed to charm me or win me over much either. The biggest problem is that the Rachel McAdams character, who starts off as a slightly kooky (perhaps a little too kooky) likeable character, suddenly becomes a bit of a bitch after the accident. This makes the main character quite unlikeable, which means you really don't care much about what happens to her. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that as the film progresses she becomes more likeable, and more like her old (though really new) self, but it's too little too late.

I know this is based on a true story, so I can't really fault it much there, it may not seem believable, but it is real, however, I do doubt the amount of cliches that the real life couple went through, the fall outs and the make ups almost in perfectly timed places. I don't know. The film just didn't hit the right buttons for me. I wanted a good romance film, and instead I got an average one, nothing really else to say, can't strum up enough emotion either way.