Movies

The Vow might be a sappy romance but if you go with it you'll find the delicate performances deliver a touching, heartfelt film.

Paige (Rachel McAdams) is giddily married to the perfect man, Leo (Channing Tatum). Gorgeous, sensitive and buff, he spells out messages in blueberries and brings her care packages in the rain. At this point you're either gagging or swooning. If you're gagging, the good news is, this is the sugar high — the rest of the film has fewer calories.

A traumatic car accident cuts this love story short as Paige wakes from a coma having lost the last five years of her memory. She's married to a man she doesn't know and discovers that she's a vegetarian, tattoo-bearing sculptor; a far cry from the life she remembers as a law student from a waspy family and engaged to another man. Stuck in limbo, Leo does whatever he can to reconnect with this wife.

Rachel McAdams is divine as always and Tatum is warm and engaging as the frustrated husband with superhuman powers of patience.

Although this is a grandiose love story, The Vow tries to be a more modern, more grounded film. It avoids the running-across-fields moments which elevates it above the usual half-baked romantic dramas out there.

The film doesn't delve into Paige's inner struggle to cope with her loss as much as we'd like, but watching the tentative steps taken by husband and wife to get to know each other again is poignant and affecting.

The Vow is let down by the need to exaggerate Paige's personas; she can't just be an artist, she has to live in a bohemian loft and have top hat-wearing friends, while with her parents she reverts to cardigans and blonde highlights.

If you're not a fan of the genre, The Vow won't change your opinion. But the film has such a lovely sentiment it's hard not to be taken in.