Weepie veterans Rachel McAdams (The Notebook) and Channing Tatum (Dear John) team up for The Vow, a glossy romantic drama in which a newlywed wakes up from a coma following a car accident and can't remember her husband - leaving him to woo her all over again.
But the crash hasn’t just erased her marital memories; it’s obliterated all trace of the last five years. So McAdams’s Paige doesn’t remember falling out with her stuffy, upper-class parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange) and has forgotten dropping out of law school and reinventing herself as a hip sculptor. She does recall her engagement to smarmy ex-fiancé Jeremy (Scott Speedman), though, and quickly reverts to being the ‘sweater-set-wearing mojito-drinking sorority girl’ she’d been before her bohemian change of heart. Will Tatum’s Leo rediscover free-spirit Paige and can he make her fall in love with him again?
The 2004 Adam-Sandler-Drew Barrymore comedy 50 First Dates played retrograde amnesia for laughs, but The Vow, loosely inspired by the experiences of real-life couple Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, aims strictly for the tear ducts. Its approach to Paige’s condition is undeniably lightweight, but McAdams and Tatum’s engaging chemistry makes it easy to root for them to be together.
Released on DVD & Blu-ray by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on Monday 25th June.
