2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for a single suggestive comment
By Derrick Bang
I’m a sucker for romantic
fantasies.
I may be the only person in the
country who fell under the spell of last year’s Winter’s Tale, which remains woefully under-appreciated. Nicholas
Cage and Meg Ryan still work their magic during the fourth (fifth?) viewing of
1998’s City of Angels, and the 2009
adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife — although not perfect — captivates nonetheless.
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| Despite decades of cautious, low-profile activity that has kept her safe, and out of public view, Adaline (Blake Lively) allows herself to fall in love with Ellis (Michiel Huisman), thereby granting him tacit access to the carefully guarded details of her life. We can't help thinking that this is unwise... |
As for the 2007 adaptation of
Neil Gaiman’s Stardust? Simply
delightful.
All of which makes me one of the
ideal target viewers for The Age of
Adaline ... and, therefore, one of many doomed to disappointment.
This is an extremely difficult
and delicate genre. One false step — a contrivance too many, a tone too
maudlin, a tragedy too melodramatic — and the whole endeavor collapses like an
improperly cooked soufflé.
Scripters J. Mills Goodloe and
Salvador Paskowitz definitely have a clever premise here. Their execution, however,
leaves much to be desired. Director Lee Toland Krieger isn’t much help either;
his oeuvre centers around snarky, modern-era gender battles such as The Vicious Kind and Celeste & Jesse Forever. Krieger,
apparently operating outside his comfort zone, hasn’t the faintest idea how to
make this eccentric drama work.
Which is a shame, because stars
Blake Lively and Michiel Huisman are very good together. Their line deliveries
sparkle, the tension between them crackles, and — despite the overwhelming odds
against — we genuinely want their star-crossed relationship to catch fire and
endure.
But Krieger, Goodloe and
Paskowitz keep getting in their own way. Every time we succumb to Lively’s
melancholy charm and radiant incandescence, we’re yanked out of the moment by a
particularly tin-eared line of dialogue, or another load of pseudo-medical
gibberish from the off-camera narrator.
Let’s start with that narrator.
Never has a film been less in need of off-camera commentary.
Apparently unable to perceive any of the gentler, more satisfying ways of
conveying essential information, Goodloe and Paskowitz have their omniscient
observer (Hugh Ross) bury us beneath paragraphs of laughably technical
codswallop.
Perhaps they were inspired by Jim
Dale’s wonderfully arch commentary throughout each episode of TV’s lamentably
short-lived Pushing Daisies. Trouble
is, that show’s tone is overtly whimsical and deliberately exaggerated, whereas
Adaline exists in the real world. And
in the real world, pedantic explanations are boring and inappropriate.
