Why you should watch "The Vow"

I rarely see new romantic movies because they rarely have anything new to offer.  My flight across the Atlantic Ocean played the movie so I decided to watch it.  Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it, watch it before reading the rest.

Story

The premise of "The Vow" is the story of a young married couple who gets into a car accident.  Channing Tatum is fine but Rachael McAdams takes a hit on the noggin and can't remember who her husband is.  She can't, in fact, remember anything past a certain date in her early life, where she was attending law school and dating some other dude.  In her current life, she is an emotionally driven artist and married to Channing; I can't remember character names.  The vows that they shared at their wedding are fairly typical and, most importantly, they are about never giving up on their love.  Channing obviously is not going to give up on his wife simply because she doesn't know who he is.  The rest of the movie is about Rachael being torn between remembering her love with Channing or going back to her old life with her rich dad, going to law school and dating the other dude, who is definitely still interested. 

What I liked

This movie had incredibly powerful moments in it that I have not seen since "P.S. I Love You", namely the scene where Channing finaly has to let his wife go back to her old life and the moment where she decides to date him again (she never actually regains her memory".  The writing for Channing's narration is not notable, but the dialog between the couple in these two moments shows that a great amount of care went into the script.  There weren't any cringe worthy cheesy moments that make me really hate the romance genre sometimes.  The editor didn't get cut-happy and the music didn't ramp up.  The really emotional moments were subtle in technique, this allowed the emotion coming from the actors to saturate your senses and the result was several tears.  BTW Channing really surprised me in this movie, I expected him to be more of a Ryan Reynolds or Ashton Kutcher, two guys who haven't shown well in movies I've seen.

Rachael wasn't an inferior character in this movie.  It wasn't up to Channing to WIN her back.  This was SO refreshing because the idea of the man needing to win the woman is rediculous and entirely the wrong message to send to young women:  "you are a prize to be won by the guy with the best work ethic".  Much like life, you want the person best suited for the job in their natural ability, not some idiot who will put on an invigorating act for the position.  The other guy interested in Rachael was not remotely a bad guy for her.  In fact he did everything right to her, he just wasn't what she was interested in.  Rachael didn't turn that dude down to go back to Channing, she did it to go be herself.  The decision to go back with Channing came naturally, exactly how it did pre-accident.  The couple came together again like couples should.  One might argue that Channing had the right to be with her post-accident, and I doubt anyone would have been mad if the movie had him winning her.  I am a big fan of how the story ended because I hate seeing the reinforcement of the idea that women are dust in the wind blown by men.

I loved that the dad had an affair with Rachael's friend.  Movies these days are too scared to be real and that was something fresh, I thought.

No cheesy stereotypical characters.  There was an absence of the loud hilarious girlfriend to the main female character.  No overcompensating douchebags threatening the male characters.  No token minority characters there only for one-liners.  I really hate when they do that.

What I hated

Channing's monologues.  I guess they were true to the perceived intelligence of Channing Tatum as an actor, but I think both the actor and the character are smarter than that.  I only watched the movie once so I don't have any quote, but I got the sense that the monologue was thrown in the movie as a list minute way of providing exposition and a driving force for the plot.

In closing, watch "The Vow".  Also "The Young Victoria" is a good period bio pic.  I probably won't see any other movies anytime soon so I will post entertaining stories.