THE AGE OF ADALINE (Lee Toland Krieger). 113 minutes. Opens Friday (April 24). Rating: NN
If Estee Lauder made a movie, it might look a lot like The Age Of Adaline, a swooning, fawning romance about a woman who achieves what no anti-wrinkle cream has before.
Blake Lively‘s Adaline is a centenarian who looks 27. Through some mysterious cosmic (not cosmetic) occurrence, Adaline hasn’t aged a day since Bing Crosby was on the airwaves.
That means she has to stay on the lam – so authorities can’t experiment on her – and pretend to be the granddaughter of her own daughter (Ellen Burstyn, looking like she’s fighting back chuckles). Adaline’s like Peter Pan, and love is the persistent hook she has to keep evading because no one can be trusted with her secrets.
Lively looks the part with a timeless and enchanting Grace Kelly air, a far cry from the grittier characters she’s tackled in The Town and Savages. However, the script gives her little more to do than flash her smile or hold back modest tears.
She gets no help from Michiel Huisman, whose nice yet bland Ellis is Adaline’s main love interest. Their spark-less, manicured romance is the stuff perfume commercials are made of.
Not until Harrison Ford arrives as a bewildered former lover is there a fleeting sense of passion (and unintended humour) in this otherwise genteel fantasy.
