Author: Don Malvasi

If the notion of retirement-age Brits heading off to sunny India to decamp at a professed luxury retreat “for the elderly and beautiful” sounds a little worrisome, you may want to beware. Fraught with forays into only the most surface-level of India’s many complex wonders and ambiguities, John Madden’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is on slightly-above-average TV sitcom territory while often cloyingly presenting itself as a more top-shelf variety of the witty British Comedy.

Self-congratulatory gags abound. Ginned up conflicts are kept simple. Madden pretends to bask in India’s rejuvenating powers while at best he basks in his good fortune to have the likes of Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson to carry him and a screenplay adapted from Deborah Maggoch’s novel. Which isn’t to say we’re dealing with total vacuity here. When actors this good are around, redemption looms right around the corner.

Nighy especially rings true and soars as a henpecked yet resilient good soul who manages to both keep his scenes’ comedy honest and also elevate the proceedings above the merely chirpy. His rough-and-tumble wife (Penelope Wilton), who treats him with utter scorn, refuses to leave the hotel. Even worse, racist and xenophobic Maggie Smith, wheelchair-bound and waiting for a cheaper-in-India hip transplant, won’t eat anything she “can’t pronounce.” Judi Dench’s character, who never held a job in her life while her recently deceased husband was still alive, takes a job in an Indian call center. Soon she’s called upon to give the staff instructions on how to humanize their phone encounters. No, thankfully, she doesn’t try to subsequently convert everyone to Christianity and a British diet. She does, however, work with a gorgeous young woman (Tena Desae) who happens to be the forbidden girlfriend of the young hotel owner who hosts the group. Dev Patel, fresh off his starring performance in Slumdog Millionaire, evokes hyper, overwrought enthusiasm for his broken down hotel where phones don’t work and some rooms don’t have doors. His mom is always around as she wants him to sell the hotel and follow her wish of an arranged marriage. His cranked up manner comes to a complete halt once she utters a word.

Meanwhile the hokiness can’t help but offset the film’s occasional poignancies. When Wilkinson reunites with a former lover he hasn’t seen in 30 years we can’t help but be moved. When Nighy finally tells off his wife we’re again caught up in marvelous, affect-free acting. Trouble is these too few scenes usually give way to strolls right back into banality. A pair of older singles on the trip (Celia Indie, and the appropriately named Ronald Pickup) seek the nearest available hook-ups, although Imrie’s stereotypically differs from Pickup’s in that her interest is primarily golddigging as opposed to Pickup’s largely physical interest. As is many films with this many characters, there always seems to be an excuse for cutting away to a different character as soon as things get a little interesting. Also, be prepared for a major character switching from intolerant and vile to rigorous and compassionate so suddenly it’s as if it were caused by a bolt of lightning rather than any plot or character development.

5.5 Good Actors Can’t Save A Gauzy, Discursive Script (Out of 10)

In Safe, Jason Statham leaves you reeling as he lashes out nasty recriminatory punishment to both sides of a warring set of guttersnipes, and tacks on for good measure an added rancor towards a bunch of crooked cops.

The cops who have it coming are former colleagues of Statham’s and they’re all on the take from both a Russian and a Chinese pair of mafias, both who are pursuing a mysterious number memorized by a kidnapped precocious 12-year-old Chinese girl . Got it? Human trafficking takes on a new dimension when Mei (Catharine Chan), the child prodigy, gets whisked over to America, “adopted” by a particularly vicious hood, Quan Chang (Reggie Lee). Right about the same time after failing to throw an MMA fight that had a ton of jingle riding on it, Statham is served a fate worse than death by the Russian baddies who lost out on the bet. After murdering his wife, they spare him a similar fate but promise to brutally murder anyone with whom he comes in close contact. So Statham takes to the streets and goes homeless, when he eventually runs into Mei–

–but why am I bothering to make it sound like plot really matters in a Statham movie. All you need to know is everybody around Statham is corrupt and evil and once he gets ticked off they’re messing with an innocent young girl, watch out New York City, and, seemingly, the entire bad-guy world. Long an invincible son-of-a-bitch, Statham finds himself with a screenplay where he may actually for a moment be falsely mistaken for a softie version of himself, given his penchant to protect Mei. So director Boaz Yakin knows enough to step up the violence a few more notches than in other Statham films, which is a little like pouring grain alcohol into 151 proof rum.

The dizzying effects of Safe provide a definite buzz for action film fans as the body count approaches a month in Afghanistan. Killings and assorted violence occur in subways, luxury hotels, the mayor’s mansion, crowded discos, and of course on the streets of Lower Manhattan, which holds up pretty well. Even if much of the film was shot in Philadelphia. Oh, and it’s not really giving anything away to reveal that Mei, who seemingly can memorize an entire phonebook in the time it takes kids her age to eat their cereal, survives alongside Statham. For him, it’s been a long, exciting ride since Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. For the two of them together, it may be the start of a franchise. Call the next one Safe 2, or How I Overcame A Stiff Kidnapping.

7 Barrels of Dead Bodies (out of 10)

The Lucky One, the newest airbrushed pseudodrama based on the umpteenth bestselling Nicholas Sparks novel, immediately raises cackles of disbelief. War veteran Logan (Zac Enron) walks from his native Colorado to Louisiana to find the previously anonymous girl whose motivating photo he found in the rubble of his third tour in Iraq. The photo pledged “stay safe” while his thousand mile walk pledges more hogwash to come.

And there’s hogwash coming out of this movie’s ears. The girl, Beth (Taylor Schilling, no Meryl Streep) runs a kennel and since Logan happens to have his dog along for the walk, he ends up taking a job with her. Not that she wants to hire a mysterious drifter (he doesn’t tell her about the photo and how much it meant to keeping him together while in combat) but she has this witty grandmother, see. Enter Ellie (Blythe Danner), who hires the guy anyway since she seems to know what’s best, especially for Beth.

Beth has a young boy, Ben, who takes a shine to Logan. A glaring ex-husband/cop, Keith (Jay R. Ferguson) is along to start jealous trouble. The venerable Mark Islam composed the score. His presence is equivalent to having Thomas Keller take a shift as line cook at Olive Garden.

When Beth and Logan finally get around to the down and dirty, they make love with their clothes on since Sparks films aren’t about steamy sex nor certainly about any sort of reality other than an eerie celebration of nirvana as an utmost blandness (Ephron seems to endure more than enjoy the rainswept passion. Once Beth tosses aside her feckless initial reservations about Logan, their only problem remains Keith, a cartoon villain straight out of the Gomer Pyle Show realm. Any Southern cracker penchant for military man exceptionalism is trumped by Keith’s doggone envy of Logan and mistrust of Beth, who he still pops in on uninvited.

Redolent of all cliche-driven films, The Lucky One keeps its eye on overcoming the Major Obstacle, a seemingly insurmountable force with an impossibly dire consequence. Here it’s Keith’s threat to use his influence in the small town power structure to wrest total custody of Ben if Beth ups and shacks up with Logan. Needless to say, Keith’s character soon loses any of an already barely existent subtlety when he goes off the deep end and then some. Bad guys in films of this ilk certainly aren’t treated with an iota of ambiguity, but rather with a sledgehammer. Yelling “fire”in crowded theater is definitely prohibited, but screaming out loud less so, and you may well consider it.

As an antidote to the piffle, Danner does the I-told-you-so stuff rather well and something about Efron is more believable than the rest. Yet with barely a scintilla of real-life credibility, The Lucky One mucks around in dangerous territory. Trying to have its vision of fantasyland and also have that vision come up against the all too real emotional residue of war, its gears clash so grindingly it’s a film in desperate need of an oil change even as the Nicholas Sparks machine keeps firing on all cylinders.

3 Louisiana Kennels Gone Schmaltzy (out of 10)

“Fishface.” That’s what many of his classmates call the 12-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears Alex of Sioux City, Iowa, when they’re not slapping or smacking or stabbing him in the school bus, or in between episodes of sitting on his face (a feat which requires specially adjusting the school bus seat). Seems in Iowa and elsewhere oblivious school bus drivers and school administrators are as blind to bullied kids as Mitt Romney is to poor people. Alex’s parents feel his Assistant Principal “politicians” them in a meeting concerning the problem. It’s not their first meeting but it is their first after the filmmakers share school bus footage with them. This time she’s patronizing to the point of showing them a photo of her own young child in a plea of inappropriate defensiveness. For the first time in the film, though, an investigation of sorts begins and the perpetrators of the bullying are brought in for questioning.

That’s the closest the new film Bully comes to demonstrating the presence of any sanity regarding any specific responses to the bullying phenomenon. Five interweaving stories, all in America’s heartland or Deep South, give accounts of bullied kids facing a wall of inaction or hostility. An Oklahoma girl who comes out of the closet demonstrates mettle and conviction beyond her years when seemingly the entire town and school population ostracize her. Her parents, of an evangelical bent themselves, show a newfound empathy but they’re alone in their backwater environs. Would that Alex’s impassive dad shared their sensitivity. His initial answer to Alex’s plight is to blame Alex, encouraging him to get tough.

Then there’s a black girl from Mississippi who decides she’s had enough and grabs Mom’s gun to bring onto the school bus, not to hurt anyone but just to “scare them.” Though no one dies in the film, two of the stories depict parents’ agony after their tortured kids committed suicide. By the film’s end they’re all organizing awareness groups to prevent other families from experiencing a similar fate. The film operates in its own little microcosm, ignoring the macrocosm of any overview of the extent of the problem or expert opinion on its causes and prevention. Cyberbullying isn’t even mentioned. There’s plenty of time, however, for numerous superfluous scenes that make the 99-minute film seem much longer.

Nonetheless, elements of this film will stick with you. Despite the film’s thematic blurriness, the human spirit prevails. None more so than Alex, who demonstrates a tenacious optimism even when he finally admits, when asked how he feels, that he’s afraid he doesn’t “feel anything anymore.” Word has it that he was quite the rock star among prepubescent female fans when he made an appearance at a promotional screening of the film. While he may not be entirely healed, that’s probably a good start.

7 Fishfaces (out of 10)

The hidebound traditionalist in me recoils at the numerous changes in Mirror Mirror, a remake of 1937’s Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Better that you add something of substance than just throw a few new ingredients in for the hell of it. Before you rush to stream the the trashy 1961 remake, Snow White and The Three Stooges, however, you could do a lot worse for your nine-year-old than drag him or her to Mirror Mirror.

First, the changes (in ascending order of banality)…Phil Collins’ daughter Lily plays Snow White with all the modernity of a fledgling Saoirse Ronan in Hanna. No passive slouch like the original Snow White, she gets special fighting tutorials from the savvy dwarfs themselves. (No, she’s not expressing latent anger at Phil for driving Peter Gabriel out of Genesis). While the action scenes of her brandishing swordwork are largely boring, at least the decision to empower her in this age of Hunger Games is audience-friendly and simultaneously politically correct. Equally inoffensive if pure vanilla are the dwarfs’ name changes. Gone are Dopey and Grumpy. In are Chuckles, Half Pint, Grim, Grub, Wolf, etc. A couple of the little guys are genuinely amusing.

Then there’s the Queen (Julia Roberts) and her magic mirror image. Passivity out the window again. Yeah, Julia, her Mirror Image seems to say, you’re the fairest of them all but as your Mirror Image who you must cross a moat to get to, I’m also here to taunt you and provide some guilt to your callous decisions to best your own step-daughter for the Prince’s good graces. Really?

Even more ludicrous are the dwarfs donning stilts when they’re doing due diligence as highwaymen, or the Prince of Valencia (Arnie Hammer, liberated from the cakey makeup in J. Edgar) compromised by the Queen’s love potion to scamper around like a hapless dog, complete with requisite sniffing and licking. By the time we get to the beast that lurks in the forest to buffer all of the Queen’s enemies, we’re definitely in La-La land.

But as I said, you could do a lot worse if you want an innocuous kids’ flick that strives to look pretty, pretty much all the time. Director Tarsem Singh sure knows his way around art direction and costuming. Going to a movie exclusively for visuals may be like going to a baseball game simply because it’s a beautiful baseball park. There are worse ways to kill an afternoon. By the eighth inning, though, you may be thinking how much more fun it would be if the home team could actually play the game. Here, despite valiant efforts by Roberts and Nathan Lane as her servant, the realization sneaks up on you that Singh may have just been going for an easy out.

4.5 Easy Outs (out of 10)

Let’s not mince words here. Nicholas Cage recent work has been a smorgasbord of the cockamamie and overwrought. Returning to the New Orleans setting of Cage’s last quality film (2009’s Bad Lieutenant) Seeking Justice starts off with some promise and gradually fizzles.

After his cellist wife (January Jones) is raped after a rehearsal, Cage’s English high school teacher Will Gerard is mysteriously approached by Simon (Guy Pearce). It seems Simon is particularly effective at a mysterious sort of vigilante justice administered to the likes of rapists and child pornographers. He initially downplays the extent of Will’s debt on behalf of the quick and total revenge that will be provided. Disoriented by his grief over a wife badly bruised and still hospitalized, Will complies. Next thing you know, he’s manipulated into a series of no-good-choice actions by an increasingly clever Simon, who’s head honcho of a secret vigilante syndicate that eventually seems as widespread in the Crescent City as gumbo. While the savvy Pearce (Memento, La A. Confidential) is convincing, his almost comical omnipresence in the film is challenged only by his equally implausible omniscience. Plot holes wide enough to fill a shrimp po-boy will pass by you like flies.

Director Roger Donaldson has a made a couple of good films over the years (13 Days, No Way Out) amidst mediocre run-of-the-mill stuff (recently the Bank Job) that provided a thrill or two for every dozen shoulder shrugs and smirks. Seeking Justice comfortably falls into the latter group. Oscar winner Nicholas Cage (it’s now 16 years ago and feels every bit of it) doesn’t do anything terribly wrong here but he certainly doesn’t elevate the material either. I haven’t seen it but I hear you need to wear a straight jacket if you attend Cage’s other new film (Ghost Rider–Spirit of Vengeance) to keep yourself from self flagellation over shelling out the !0 bucks. Here you’re more likely to enjoy a few scenes like when Will sneaks into a newspaper office after hours and gives a not suspecting reporter a detailed answer to her question of grammar before she realizes he’s an intruder. Simon is so over-the-top you can swallow a certain amount of plot affronts to your intelligence. And Jones looks good while more and more of the shenanigans around her get increasingly bizarre.

But let’s face it. This film is about as smart as the scene where Will is being chased by a cop car. After an interminable race and getaway I was left with the nagging thought that New Orleans must be really broke after Katrina since they evidently can’t afford police car radios to send for help when chasing a crazed vigilante. Succumb to this film and you’ll soon realize Cage’s character wasn’t the only one to make a bargain with the devil.

5 Flying Plot Holes (out of 10)

File this one under droll and partly quaint Brit arthouse-lite vehicle saved by an Emily.

Blunt, that is. No, not the film, the Emily. Ever since playing the plain-Jane office assistant in Devil Wears Pravda, Emily Blunt’s been one to watch. As Young Victoria she was a convincing queen. Most recently she helped glide us through the sci-fi overreach The Adjustment Bureau as Matt Damon’s forbidden lass. She’s got a frisky screen presence. Here she’s the antidote to an Asberger-ish main character played by reliable if over-saturated Ewan MacGregor. (No, it only SEEMS like he’s doing ten films a year lately.)

I’ve waited until now to speak of their new film, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen because, well, it’s often about as interesting as salmon fishing in some dry river across the other side of the world. McGregor is Dr. Alfred Jones, an uber-scientist who knows a lot about fish and has about as much curiosity and adventure to his outlook and existence as your average hermit crab. His daily routines make rigid look like jello. His saving grace may well be his ability to mock himself. Even when adhering to repeat behaviors like calling Blunt by her surname Miss Chetwood-Talbot despite her invite to call her Harriet, he’s dead serious, yet somehow also aware he’s being a dweeb. Blunt’s some sort of marketing whiz hired by an ultra rich sheikh (Amr Waked) to throw a cool 50 million British pounds toward a fairy dust project of shipping a mere 10,000 salmon across the world so he and his people can, er, fish to their heart’s content. Build a dam and they will come if you add enough cash.

If you don’t drift off and start thinking about some other, better movie, you’ll encounter numerous subplots worthy of plodding through. McGregor and his wife have a paint-by-numbers marriage. Blunt falls for a dude who is soon shipped off to Afghanistan. British fishermen go into an uproar when a government agency threatens to remove most of their salt water salmon stock and ship it off to the Middle East. Farm salmon are substituted. The sheikh is a nice guy who offers McGregor aspirational life bromides worthy of Wayne Dyer. There’s a lot of fishing, which McGregor does proficiently (after all, he invented something called the Wiley Jones fly), while the sheikh gamely fishes knee-deep in his river without taking off his robes. Things eventually go well with the longshot project despite McGregor’s stiff skepticism. Then things go bad. Stick around, they may go well again before the film’s over.

The redoubtable Kristin Scott Thomas shines as a press secretary for the British Prime Minister. She’s great at ridiculing everyone around her while simultaneously getting them to do exactly what she wishes. For director Lasse Hallstrom (Cider House Rules) it’s now 27 years and nearly as many films since his masterpiece My Life As A Dog. Screenwriter Simon Beaufort (Slumdog Millionaire) adapts the Paul Today novel.

Throughout I was anchored by Blunt’s lure, which she cast off as a bemused, near tongue-in-cheek tolerance and growing affection for McGregor. He’ll eventually try to reel her in, a move not as smooth as his fly-casting. She’ll reach a low tide, then have a third-act resurgence. You’ll have lots of light chuckles and may even decide to take up a little fishing. It may be awhile, though before you’ll venture off into another fishing film. Even with a hook as good as Blunt, this one can be fishy.

6 Fishy Dweebs (out of 10)

Hard as it is to believe, offscreen Woody Harrelson purveys an image of a loose, nearly slacker vibe, while onscreen he lays down a sense that he clearly knows how to get down to business. In the dark yet highly perceptive Rampart, Harrelson portrays the rogue cop Dave Brown, a misogynist, racist, intensely self-contained and hardheaded throwback to the times when police got things done without much regard for the rule of law or political correctness. The milieu is Los Angeles, 1990s, post-Rodney King. (Rampart is the police division in central Los Angeles.) After Brown is caught on video pursuing and beating an Hispanic ruffian who plowed into his police car, he’s asked to resign by assistant D. A. Sigourney Weaver.  It seems there’s a backdrop of an underway massive investigation against the Rampart unit and Brown senses he’s being targeted as the perfect fall guy to take the heat off the police department at large. So he resists.

His meetings with police higher ups and Weaver will crack you up. They perfectly present Harrelson with the chance to show acting chops as the underdog par excellence, a reprise of his playing Hustler magazine’s Larry Flynt in the 1996 film, The People Versus Larry Flynt. Spouting hyper-articulate, yet non sequiter-filled monologues, the resilient Brown continually frustrates his superiors with mouthy insults, tone-deaf legal threats, and often accurate if grandiose assessments of their own motives. Then he retreats to his police car to commit yet another over-the-top blunder or two. Eventually this starts to wear on him. There’s only so much solace in booze and promiscuous sex (here Robin Wright among others) when the pressure is on.

Home leaves little room for refuge. His teenage daughters live in adjoining apartments with their Moms (Cynthia Nixon and the always talented Anne Heche), who are incidentally sisters. Brown crashes with them eenie-meanie-miney-mo-style until he wears out his welcome. Given his personality, that isn’t too long. Then, when his luck runs low and he needs a place to stay, he merely shakes down a hotel employee. When he needs pain killers, he blackmails a pharmacist. When he needs money, he contacts a retired cop ( an excellent Ned Beatty), who was a pal of his Dad, also a cop on the force. Looking for a scheme from Beatty, Brown starts his skid into paranoia. It’ll eventually include Wright as well. While he’s got every reason to be paranoid in the first place, Brown’s defensive instincts are brought up several notches. He begins to show the stress, yet he still retains a tenacity that is ironically intoxicating. Harrelson, who also portrayed an equally nerves-of-steel military man in the excellent The Messenger, for which he garnered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominaton, somehow makes you like Brown despite his being such a total scumbag. He’s curiously like the kid in high school we knew we shouldn’t hang around but couldn’t help ourselves.

Director Oren Moverman (also The Messenger and also an Oscar nomination, for screenwriting) works in an often impressionistic, artsy vein, which further brings into relief the harshness of Brown’s predicament and his fascinating, compelling, yet also tragic response. Co-written by the novelist James Ellroy (L. A. Confidential), the film zings with a plausibility for time and place and, above all, character. Humor rears its head, often married with squeamishness. Moverman and Ellroy serve as perfect catalysts to bring Harrelson’s best to the fore. Physically he’s all pumped-up bluster. Emotionally, an unfettered yet hapless “piece of work.” The film gives one the inescapable sense of honesty in its portrayal of Brown. Not judging him or explaining his motives, it’s an unqualified triumph in getting us under his skin. Besides Harrelson, the rest of the acting (especially Wright) dazzles as well, including Ice Cube as an Internal Affairs investigator and Steve Buscemi, as a hamstrung top cop. Plot is secondary to the central experience, visually heightened by cinematographer Bobby Bonkowski, who shot in digital.

Harrelson, the openly pot-smoking, raw food eating, laid back dude who would ostensibly seem more at home in the new hippie commune comedy, Wanderlust, continues to surprise and enchant. Working totally against type for the second film running, he’s a biting actor on the rise and one of our best. In Ramparts he holds in reserve enough of himself to seem to be outside his character looking in, enjoying the view. Can’t blame him.

8 Pernicious, Lovable Dudes (out of 10)

One thing you quickly realize when you sit down to watch a Denzel Washington movie is he nearly always give the pleasurable illusion that whoever he is portraying, he is playing exactly himself. Whatever the scripted setup the spotlight is always on Denzel, the ultra-cool, can-do-it-in-his-sleep, nonpareil hero for all occasions. We’ve come accustomed to his responses to normally stress-filled situations–often comedic always command, not a little eager to showboat.

If his characters can do no wrong even in villainy, his choice of vehicles may be getting bit stale. Washington could stand a change-the-grain role similar to another great actor who always seems to play himself–Jack Nicholson when he took on About Schmidt, for instance. Denzel’s own “going against type” shouldn’t just be reserved for his occasional roles on the Broadway stage.

Safe House, full of all the gimmicks and doodads of a first-time screenwriter (David Guggenheim), explores the psycho world of 21st-century espionage. No, not like Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy, which while occasionally too tame for its own good (it was after all so explicitly 20th century) created a thinking man’s mystery with style and panache to burn. Leave your thinking cap in the lobby for this one.

For all the Sam Shepards, Vera Farmigas, and Brendan Gleeson in this cast, Safe House should have been a lot more than plot holes stitched together with dull action movie drones and only occasional jolts of adrenaline. Enough of car chases where guys going 80 miles per hour crash into an immovable object and walk out with a small cut on their face. Doesn’t anybody do a BELIEVABLE car chase scene (a la Bullit or The French Connection) anymore? Safe House’s cranked up treachery via interminable grade-B Bourne-style fight scenes (the film shares the Bourne franchise’s cinematographer, Oliver Wood) and those way too elongated car chase scenes strides at every turn to outdo both all other CIA movies and, well, itself.

Stand back to make room for all comparisons of Ryan Reynolds/Denzel versus Ethan Hawke/Denzel in Washington’s Oscar-winning Training Day, which also shared the wily mentor/innocent young buck theme. Unfortunately, it’s arena football here compared to Training Day’s NFL-playoff level filmmaking. A scene where Matt Weston (Reynolds) loses his legendary bad-boy fallen agent and now handcuffed hostage Tobin Frost (Denzel) inside a crowded soccer stadium begs the questions of why his bosses sent the untested CIA man there to get a key in a locker that could have been left anywhere? Or why after a harried Frost turns himself into the American Embassy in Capetown, the same crazed assassins pursuing Frost before his surrender also show up at the safe house that Weston has been caretaking. Someone doesn’t want him interrogated, maybe? Duh.

The assassins show up yet again when a freed Frost finds Ruben Blades in the middle of nowhere South African shantytown to help him forge some new documents. Eventually Weston, portrayed as a Yale grad and fluent in Afrikaans, catches on. There’s a mole in the CIA. By now Reynolds has to ditch his French girlfriend (Nora Arnezeder) because he doesn’t want her caught up in this stuff. Lucky her. She gets to leave the movie early.

The rest of us could never walk out on a Denzel Washington movie. He’s far too ingrained in our inner movie hero radar. Can’t wait for the next chance to watch him play himself again.

4 Spys Gone to Hell (out of 10)

In a brief but tone-changing scene in The Vow, Jessica Lange plays things out with an attitude of “OK-I’ve-had-enough-of-this-fluff//pay-attention-now-if-you’d-like-to-see-some-real-acting.” In the scene the award-winning actress gives her daughter (Rachel McAdams) a passionate explanation for Lange’s ostensible weakness in her relationship with her alpha lawyer husband (Sam Neill). In this Romcom, specially served for Valentine’s Day, Lange’s character stands out for the self-awareness of her motivations. In the case of forgetful McAdams and husband Channing Tatum, they mostly go around clueless and lighthearted. In McAdams’ case, she’s got a good reason.

A car accident rendered her semi-amnesiac. She remembers everything up until Tatum (which honestly is probably the best thing that could ever happen to someone), everything until she ran off from law school and doting parents to the big city (Chicago) to do art. When she first comes to she thinks Tatum is her doctor rather than her husband and she doesn’remember being a sculpturess either. Her and Tatum’s time together after the accident reeks of what seems countless other movies with this setup. So what we have here is not only a portrait of a person trapped in amnesia but a movie itself trapped in amnesia.

In the film’s favor McAdams (Midnight in Paris) can be infectiously quirky in a pretty decent way and Tatum actually surprises here amidst not the highest of expectations. What bears scrutiny, however, is the somewhat peachy, high on froth screenplay. Not feeling real is one thing. Verging on gasbag garrulousness is quite another.

Romantic?

Come on….. Only to the extent The Vow, certainly not by anything it actually deals with head-on, does get one to think about some heady issues. After the accident McAdams is totally different from the bohemian carefree spirit depicted in flashbacks of marital bliss with Tatum. Regressing back to the lulling pull of her parents, she not only looks and acts a hundred times straighter, she even confesses to a James Patterson novel (gasp) when asked her favorite book. She’s nothing like the person Tatum knew and loved, yet his affection is unmoved by the changes. McAdams ex-boyfriend is suddenly back in her life and since the end of her memories extend to just before their breakup she’s not only smitten with him, but he with her despite a nasty breakup she apparently brought on. Neither of these guys is moved by McAdams going through changes to rival Jekyll and Hyde. Love is all you need (and McAdams’ rosy good looks.)

So we’ll wait for another movie for anything more complex on the relative natures of identity, affection and radical personality change. Myself, I think the last scene in Almodovar’s The Skin I Live comes pretty close come to think of it.

Tatum owns a recording studio which he never bothers to check up on while waiting an interminable amount of time for McAdams to come out of her coma. His female sidekick there gives him advice on getting his wife to fall in love with him again….”What does she like in bed?” she asks.”Tickling,” he reluctantly admits. “Try that” she says. He does. It doesn’t work.

Neither does the film much of the time. But, hey, it’s Valentine’s Day. Can’t exactly rush out and see A Separation or Carnage just to avoid broad sentimentality pulled out of equally broad plot holes, right? Well, wait. If you did you’d get relationships authentic to the point that you’ll at least know any truths to be gained will give substantial insight instead of a brief sugar rush.

5 sugar rushes (out of 10)