The Age of Adaline left absolutely no impression on me once I left the theater. Even as I write this, I’m having trouble conjuring thoughts about what was an utterly bland and simpering experience. The film feels like it’s trying to be
Forrest Gump mixed with a Nicholas Sparks novel and not doing very well at either of those. Another comparison to this film is the television series
Forever, which has a shockingly similar premise. But while Ioan Grufford is charming and charismatic in that series, Blake Lively is bland and carries the same monotone in her voice whether she’s happy, upset, or fearing for her life.
I could go through a laundry list of the movie’s problems, but I’m going to focus on the fact that, through completely unnecessary narration, a pseudo-science explanation is offered for Adaline’s immortality and it just kills the whole thing for me. No explanation was needed; you could have let yourself run on fairy tale logic and I would have been far more forgiving. After all, Harrison Ford reads his lines like a wistful old grandfather reading to young’uns, so it wouldn’t have been too far of a mood stretch. Speaking of, Harrison’s scenes are positively magnetic, owing much to his acting talent and his years of experience. Those are where the movie was the most interesting and tolerable. The rest just left me cold. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had me far better sold on a romance with unusual age circumstances than this did and if it weren’t part of my job to watch the whole thing, I would have walked out of the movie before the halfway mark.
Posted under
Reel Snippets
