Channing Tatum on The Vow: “It was like, ‘Do I really need to have my shirt off to take out the garbage while eating a piece of pizza and picking up a cat?’ Shirtless? Was that really necessary?”
The Vow is one of those “my wife loses her memory of our relationship in a car accident and I have to get her back” movies and it’s really earnest, as opposed to 50 First Dates, but in that earnestness (embodied, really, by the puppyish charm of Tatum) it’s freaking hilarious. Ya’ll dropped the ball on telling me that I should go see this film in the theaters with a flask smuggled in my purse. Because The Vow is totally a film you watch while getting goofy drunk.
The thing that I really enjoyed about the movie was that Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams are playing this adorable hipster (eh, for lack of a better word) couple - she’s a sculptor estranged from her family! He runs a music studio trying to get authentic, warm, analog sound! Tatum describes love by quoting Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on the subject of genius! It sort of felt like the role was written for Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Not that Tatum isn’t charming in that lunkheaded way, but you can’t quite buy him as a guy who needs to live in the music because he’s so cute, and you know that the world has treated him wonderfully because of that big lug handsomeness. But I suspect Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rachel McAdams would’ve been woefully mismatched.
The memory loss thing is goofy enough, but plot-wise, McAdams reverts back to her former, staid self - a law student with straight hair that is dyed an awful blonde with a rich family who all vote Republican. Not only does she not remember her husband, she has become a total lame choad at the same time! (Obviously the sort of law student who goes straight to a firm to make the big bucks, not to pay off loans.)
The thing that didn’t make sense about the movie, as well, was that even if she didn’t remember her husband, wouldn’t she have taken one look at Channing Tatum and been like, yeah, alright previous me! Good job! Let me get a piece of those pretty abs! She’s just awful and bitchy and law-student-y when Tatum basically spends the whole movie being perfect, charming, and wearing a lot of cardigans. (This is also where I would’ve believe Joseph Gordon-Levitt a little bit more - he could be a spindly guy who has to work to get the girl in a different way.)
There was a lot of aqua in the movie that I think was supposed to symbolize Channing Tatum, or their cool bohemian relationship, but it was so overused I just started yelling Aqua! every time I saw it. The music cues were stuff like OK Go, which, of course. Jaunty pretend indie. Rachel McAdams’ charm is fairly dangerous. In no way would the film work without her.