THE VOW (Michael Sucsy). 104 minutes. Opens Friday (February 10). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
The Vow is a silly romance that’ll quickly evaporate from your memory. That’s appropriate, because it’s about Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum), two married boho Chicagoans whose lives are upturned when an accident causes Paige to lose all memories of him. She does remember her earlier life, however, including her old fiancé (Scott Speedman) and her estranged parents (Jessica Lange and Sam Neill), who now want her to live with them. Should Leo try to woo her back or let her be?
All this hokum would be semi-bearable if the characters had any depth. But the script, even with pre-accident flashbacks, never makes them more than pretty people who hang out in trendy downtown cafés and dabble in the arts. (By contrast, Paige’s old friends and family are all conservative and suburban.)
Tatum mumbles through his lines and occasionally displays a gift for comedy (along with those abs in the many shirtless scenes), while McAdams is required to do the heavy dramatic lifting as a woman who’s deeply conflicted. She’s quickly becoming her generation’s Julia Roberts: someone you can’t stand to look at when she’s not smiling. But she does get about five hairstyle changes, so there’s that.
Other than the big, dark secret that Paige will eventually have to remember, the only suspense comes from location-spotting, since Toronto stands in for the Windy City more than a few times.
