No WOW in The Vow

It’s a great story, the one about the wife who loses her recent memory in an automobile accident and cannot recall either meeting or marrying her husband. He stands by her and stands up to her parents, but in the long run, it’s a losing battle, so he lets her go and moves on with his life in whatever fashion makes that bearable. Long story short (or else it wouldn’t be made into a film) she comes back, not because she remembers her husband, but because she is finally told why she left her family in the first place: her father had an affair with one of her (age inappropriate) best girl friends.

Okay, if that’s the story, it’s challenging to turn it into a meaningful 2-hour theater release, but keeping the pace moving and seeing how the couple develop back into a marriage could do the trick; however, the male lead, Channing Tatum, would be a better leading man for a remake of Day of the Living Dead! This is a good-looking, strapping young man with a killer smile, but zero charisma, zero animation, zero ability to bring the audience into the story and keep them on the edge of their seats until the resolution. I love a good chick flick, and even enjoyed Channing in a couple of other movies, but he totally missed the mark in this offering. I'm sure the only reason this film has lasted 2 weeks is that it was released for V-Day without much competition.

A half hour in, I asked my 2 movie buddies if we could leave and go get a piece of pie and a hot cup of coffee; after all, I knew how the story ends, so if getting there is not worth either the time or the effort, why stick around and take the journey? I was hard-pressed to stay in my seat and absolutely could not sit still! I fidgeted and make snide comments, but they wouldn’t budge from their seats.

To top it off, when we left the theater a huge cold front/storm had blown into the area (and dropped snow in the pass a couple hours after I returned home). Seeing the ominous black clouds and shivering in the 20-degree drop in temp, we headed for home, rather than for a piece of pie and a cuppa joe, so the whole experience was a waste of time, money and personal resources.