Leo (Channing Tatum) with the dorky straw fedora he first wore when he met Paige (Rachel McAdams) in the pleasing romance “The Vow.”
It’s billed as a romance — but for hipster guys, “The Vow” may come off as a horror movie. What could be more nightmarish than marrying a sexy, free-spirited sculptor who gets a brain injury and wakes up from her coma as “a sweater-set-wearing, mojito-drinking sorority girl”?
The bonk-on-the-head amnesia plot is a cobwebby one, but in this case it’s based on a true story — of much more ordinary-looking folks than Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams. These two stars bring believable chemistry and emotion to a film that might otherwise wilt under the weight of so much melodrama — similar to what McAdams did with Ryan Gosling in the weepie “The Notebook.”
We meet music producer Leo (Tatum) and artist Paige (McAdams) as they leave Chicago’s Music Box movie theater on a snowy night. As the happy couple stops their car at an intersection to make out, they’re rear-ended by a truck. Paige goes through the windshield.
Flash back four years to love at first sight, in their local DMV. How charming is Leo? Enough to pick up Paige in the world’s least romantic locale, wearing a dorky straw fedora. Director Michael Sucsy deploys Tatum perfectly: A former stripper in real life, his meathead looks cloak a stealth sensitivity. You always sort of expect him to be monosyllabic, and yet he’s surprisingly good with big words.
Soon, they’re exchanging hasty but heartfelt vows in an illicit wedding in an art museum — a memory Leo recalls while sitting at Paige’s hospital bedside.
When she wakes up, she thinks he’s her doctor. Not a good sign. He must explain who he is, and then who she is: a successful sculptor who’s just gotten a big commission from the city. Her response: “What about my law degree?”
Five years of Paige’s memory are gone, leaving her pre-Leo and pre-art school, back when she was engaged to a business-suited stiff named Jeremy (Scott Speedman, looking whittled-down from his “Felicity” days).
Post-accident Paige is comically un-artsy: She puts trashy highlights in her hair! She reads James Patterson! She hangs out with her bitchy high school friends! Leo is justly confused, but determined to win her back. Even the new, less-literary her.
Now a stranger, he must wrest his amnesiac bride from the clutches of her domineering parents (Jessica Lange and Sam Neill, so clenched-looking, you know they’re hiding something), and somehow convince her to love him all over again.
Leo fights dirty: One morning in their apartment, he strolls into the room naked — “habit,” he apologizes sheepishly, then grins. He knows an eyeful of Tatum is worth 1,000 words.
Director Sucsy (“Grey Gardens”) works within the trappings of a typical cheesy romance but finds realism in the details and the banter.
You believe this couple had a spark worth fighting for.
And that’s where the moral of “The Vow” will get you, if you’re feeling even a twinge of Valentine’s Day sentiment: Love is wanting to be with someone even when they revert to an earlier, embarrassingly lame self. Sort of the way I fell for this movie — in spite of all its trashy highlights.