Preface

• Wow, another movie review!
• Yeah with all the trailers being released recently, I found it ironic when there were literally no trailers shown before my showing of Age of Adaline tonight!

Premise

• The Age of Adaline is a romantic drama about a woman named Adaline who magically stops aging, naturally this causes some issues in her personal life (with family and friends and gentlemen friends) and now we get to see it unfold!
• And while the pacing is off throughout, well, nearly the whole movie it is pretty enjoyable.

Cast and Characters

• Okay, so this cast is mostly made up of J or I-List actors, who I don’t know extremely well.
• You can tell that if there was a much more concise version of this script Jennifer Lawrence would be Adaline and Adam Driver would be the main dude Ellis in this.
• Overall though, the cast does a fine job.
• The actress that plays Adeline isn’t super relatable, though she is human enough for us to recognize her situation.
• And the guy Ellis, her love interest, was a little bit annoying at the beginning but really grows on you throughout the movie.
• No one’s going for an Oscar here, and there is a LITTLE phoning-in but for the most part each actor takes it seriously.
• Harrison Ford, he was really good in the movie!
• You know that Harrison Ford is in it cuz they need to at least have one A-Lister.
• But he delivers. The past few Harrison Ford performances have been absurdly phoned-in, but he actually seemed to be trying in this one.
• And the elderly actress that played Adaline’s daughter was a very peachy side-story that kinda lit up the screen.
• Adeline’s dog was awesome too, probably my favorite character.

Script

• Alright, like I said we aren’t going for the Oscar here.
• That being said, this movie has a lot of cheese in it.
• Yeah the movie is cheesy and corny, as an immortality movie would be.
• This is miles ahead of that Tuck Everlasting thing from like the early 2000s, but still naturally cheesy.
• The dialogue wasn’t awful in the movie for the most part, despite a few select lines.
• And it is pretty by-the-numbers in the sense that you know exactly how almost all of the movie is going to go down.
• I’ll discuss pacing real soon, but this goes right in with it: I saw one trailer for this before Mockingjay: Part One and with that one trailer, I assumed this movie would be longer than it was, and much different than it was.
• In that sense (and these are mild spoilers, but keep reading if you want to see the movie) I thought that it was going to be 2 hours 15 minutes of Adeline’s life from the point of her being granted immortality until the end (whether she dies, or her husband dies, or they both die, or whatever!). It isn’t like that though, this is the story of one romance she has in the present day and does occasional flashbacks to her past days.
• Just letting you guys know, I didn’t know that going in so there it is for y’all!

Direction/Pacing

• I thought this movie was directed well.
• It wasn’t Christopher Nolan by any means, but there was some style and a little flare to it which I dug.
• The big issue though, and I don’t know if it was because of the writing or directing (probably both), was the pacing.
• They spend very little time on Adeline’s origins and even if you don’t spend the whole movie in the past, some more flashbacks and elaboration would have been especially helpful in building the characters up a little bit more.
• That being said, the characters weren’t hugely built-up but still felt three-dimensional and pretty life-like.
• The end is a little long, there were about three or four points it could’ve cut off and been just fine, but I did like how it eventually ended.

In Conclusion

• In Conclusion, The Age of Adaline is your pretty by-the-numbers romance.
• With that, I still had some fun with it and despite some clichés, it never felt so cheesy and so corny that it was unrealistic (despite a farfetched premise).
• The actors gave 95% good performances with very little phoning-in (though occasionally), and I did think the leads served a functional job.
• The pacing was off, but the directing was pretty stylish.
• Ultimately, you could probably just wait for this one to come out on cable, though I would definitely deem it a positive film, and a great date movie.

3/5

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So guys, there’s my review of The Age of Adaline! Have you guys seen this movie and, if so, what are your thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments below and as always, thanks for reading guys.