Thursday 9 November 2017

The Age of Adaline (Lee Toland Krieger, 2015)

In 1937, aged 29, a woman is hit by lightning and stops aging. In present-day San Francisco, she lives a self-imposed single life, having changed her identity every decade to avoid questions. Then romance enters her life for the first time in decades in the form of the perfect sensitive man.
This is hardly a new premise: the idea of eternal youth is a perennial fantasy and there will always be mileage in it. New spins on the idea therefore really have work hard to bring some twist to it, and The Age of Adaline doesn't make much of an effort to do so, settling instead for a sugar-coated romance. The chemistry between the two leads is an asset, and Blake Lively conveys well the sense of a woman who's at once afraid of the pain of any more commitment and also like someone who has stepped right out of the past, with her old-fashioned bearing and diction. In a supporting role, Harrison Ford recently-established irascible gramps schtick is as dependable as ever, playing an unexpected blast from her past. But it's all a bit too wet to have any real substance.

5/10

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