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Valentine’s Day just wouldn’t be the same without a sappy romance or two, which guys will inevitably feel pressured into taking their wives and girlfriends to see. Often, they’re based on some tear-jerking Nicholas Sparks novel, in which someone ultimately dies from a terminal illness, thereby making all of the women in the audience weep into their tissues while the men fidget uncomfortably in their seats. This year’s selection, The Vow, is instead based on a true story, which helps to make it a little less weepy and a little more surprising—though it’s still just as forgettable.
Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum star as Paige and Leo, a couple of Chicago newlyweds who seem to have the perfect life. She’s a talented artist, he owns his own recording studio, and they’re absolutely, madly in love. But then, one winter night, a car accident lands Paige in the hospital with a serious brain injury. When she wakes up, everything is different. She’s lost years of her memory—including all of her years with Leo.
During her recovery, Paige begins to return to her old life, reconnecting with her estranged family, her old friends, and even her ex-fiancé, Jeremy (Scott Speedman). But Leo remains determined to win his wife back again—at any cost.
If there’s one thing that can be said about The Vow, it’s that it’s not what you might be expecting. I’ll admit that I thought I had the whole story figured out before the movie began—but I was wrong. Thanks to those touches of real-life drama, it doesn’t exactly play out as it would in a Nicholas Sparks novel.
Still, the story’s authenticity does often make it frustrating—and sometimes even exhausting. Though it’s perfectly understandable that poor, confused Paige would return to what she remembers—her old life with her family—it’s made all too obvious that she’s making the wrong decision. Her parents (played by Sam Neill and Jessica Lange) are blatantly manipulative, stepping in and throwing both their money and their opinions around while doing their best to push Leo out of the way. And every last member of Paige’s old circle in the suburbs is snobbish and irritating, making her gradual transformation back into their world all the more maddening.
Meanwhile, back in the city, poor Leo remains unnaturally patient, doting on her when she’s clearly put off by it and sacrificing everything to be with her. His is the kind of unwavering, I’d-die-without-you love that you only find in movies. While it’s often completely overplayed, it’ll make you feel increasingly sorry for him—to the point that you’ll eventually come to resent Paige and her persistence in shutting him out. After all, Tatum may not be an Oscar-worthy actor, but the sincerity and sheer effort that he puts into the role makes him irresistibly charming as Leo—in a lovably bumbling kind of way.
Of course, at its heart, The Vow is still the typical Valentine’s Day romance: a generally forgettable romance about a flawed woman who wins the undying love of a handsome man who’s perfect in pretty much every way. As far as sappy romances go, though, it’s better than expected, with touches of humanity that keep it from becoming just another romantic tear-jerker.
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