Friday, May 22, 2015

Movie Review - The Age of Adaline

Last weekend my wife, my daughter and I went to see "Marvel's The Age of Adaline". I was pretty disappointed. Where was Iron Man and Captain America? Where were the great special effects?  Oh, what a minute. This was not that Marvel movie.

I told my wife and daughter that I was going to open my review this way and they didn't think it was too funny. But it's my blog so I'm going with it.

I hadn't even heard of this movie until I saw Blake Lively, who plays Adaline, on a talk show. The concept sounded intriguing. The scene they showed had Harrison Ford in it. I'll got to any movie with Harrison Ford. When I heard my wife and daughter planning to see it, I joined them.

It's not a particularly original story. A person (Adaline) finds that she seems to be immortal, or at least long-lived. How does she face life when all about her grow old except her?

OK, so a familiar story but done pretty well. Adaline, born in 1908, seems like a normal girl. When she is 29 she's in a horrific car accident, which through an improbably series of events, stops her from aging. She spends most of her life running from shadowy government types who want to study her and entanglements with other people, especially men.

The first 30 minutes or so details all this background and the story gets going in 2014. Her best friend is a blind woman who thinks Adaline is older than she looks. She has no other friends, except a daughter born before the accident who now looks more like Adaline's grandmother than her daughter. She's well on planning her next disappearance when she meets a guy and lets him open a crack into her life.

I'm not very familiar with Blake Lively's work. The only thing I've seen her in was 2011's "Green Lantern". Than movie was so forgettable that I believe I've lost remembrance of 2-3 months of my life around when I saw it.

Lively is, of course, a beautiful woman and, if you're a guy, you might see how someone could fall in love with her at first glance. But what really got to me was her voice. She's a young woman, but she speaks with a feeling of experience well beyond her age. She is, after all, over 100 years old. Even as she starts to fall in love with this guy, you can hear in her voice that she's not at all sure it's a good idea.

She was entirely captivating in every scene she was in, both by how she looked and how she spoke.

If you're a little tired of summer blockbuster fare (even though it's only May), I'd strongly recommend this movie.

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