Film Review
Prof Joel White
Film: The Vow
Cast: Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, Wendy Crewson, Joe Coloshen, Sam Neil, Tony Klein, Jeff Arthur
Director: Don Blakely
Cinema: Eastgate
Running time: 99 minutes
Type of film: Psychological Family Drama:
Age restriction: Adults only
Informing the audience at the outset that the storyline of the film “The Vow” has been adapted from the experience of a real-life American couple, and showing us their photograph, with their two children, has the desired effect of diminishing the inevitable scepticism which this film will evoke in the discerning film-goer.
We are in Chicago, in mid-western American, on the shores of Lake Michigan. Second in population to New York City, Chicago has opted for keeping intact that extensive portion of subway system which runs above ground; giving the film’s viewers a unique opportunity to see subway cars running along otherwise bustling and crowded city streets.
Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Joe Collins (Channing Tatum) are presented to us as an upwardly mobile married couple. A traumatic traffic experience leaves Paige with total Memory Loss. 
At this point the film’s makers take their audience on a very far-fetched ride. We are required to believe that Paige even forgets that she was a vegetarian and has no memory of being a married woman.
Immediately I felt it would be a wise move for Joe to seek the help of her parents. I felt the movie maker had gone too far when we learn that she never told her parents that she was married albeit they live in the same city.
One hilarious scene depicts her regaining consciousness following the accident which caused the amnesia. Her husband is at her bedside having been informed of the accident. To him, her remarks seem very strange, she assumes that he is her doctor. And so their strange, brand new relationship begins as strangers.
Her parents, of whom she has no memory, enter the picture with no love for the man their daughter has married without even telling them. And then there is Jeremy, the man she had a love affair with before meeting and marrying Joe Collins. He feels that now that Paige is starting over, as it were, he should very rightly re-enter the picture.
Naturally this is Hollywood all ends well, but I was left with a professional interest in meeting a couple who are proof that truth is stranger than fiction.