Review of The Age of Adaline (2015) by Preston L — 22 Sep 2015

Age of Adaline is about a woman named Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) who was struck by lightning in a snow storm after a car crash and her body chemistry changes so she stops aging and looks 29. We see some of her life having to change her identity frequently to keep up with the fact that she is 100+ years old. We see her in the present day world and living her mundane life until she meets a boy (Michiel Huisman) and drama ensues.

Things I Like:

Blake Lively. Blake Lively is the title character and I think she does a really good job of looking young but carrying herself as though she has all this weight of constant change and loss and passing of time and especially in moments when she is reminded that she is going to keep living and other things will pass and die and she will someday have to be completely alone. It's a well done job.

Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn plays Lively's daughter, who is in her eighties. But the dynamic between her and Lively is really mother daughter. Burstyn seems more youthful than Lively frequently when they are on screen together. Her work shows great skill and the moments between the two are some of the best in the entire movie.

Harrison Ford. Ford plays the father of the man that comes into Adaline's life. He has a lot of weight thrown on him throughout the film and he shows a much more subtle side of himself. Ford is frequently the grizzled curmudgeon. I'm talking as far back as Return of the Jedi. In this he really feels like a genuine father figure to his son and his dynamic with Lively is really great as well.

Things I Didn't Like:

The Tone. This movie is BORING! The performances are good but the story is almost nonexistent and the film doesn't go anywhere it ends almost where it began. It has a sort of overcast tone to it but it really shouldn't because that causes the thing to be bland not dramatic. This causes the film to fall into deep pits especially when combined with my next point.

Adaline isn't a Protagonist We Relate To. Adaline is a woman, who is super intelligent, 108 years old, charming, beautiful, and has chosen to live a mundane life to protect her secret. She goes through this dilemma of choosing whether to risk in the moment happiness and fall in love while risking future heartbreak when her potential love dies or to be less currently happier but not be devastated in the future. Here is the problem with that. We as the audience don't relate to her problem. It's not something we care about. She's a person who has had advantages we will never have and when she uses them we lose interest in her. It's like Lucy from last year and how we stopped caring about her when she gets godlike and we no longer worry about what will happen to her. Adaline doesn't have action to fall back on and so we don't care about her character and as a result the end of the movie in something we couldn't care less about.

Overall. Overall, the movie has a lot of strong performances but that is where the merits go. The movie is boring, the tone is all off, the protagonist is someone we lose interest in overtime for having problems we can't relate to. The movie is one that could have been much more interesting but by making a story of an immortal woman choosing whether or not to fall in love with a man we don't care as an audience and that makes the movie one we are never interested in.