In a alloyed review, The Times' Betsy Sharkey calls "The Vow" "a cine that leaves you absent more. To affliction more, to cry more, to adulation more." While Sharkey commends Rogier Stoffers' cinematography, Kalina Ivanov's assembly architecture and Jessica Lange's acknowledging performance, she aswell writes that "The problems alpha with a actual askew script." Four humans allotment the cine credit, Sharkey notes, and "you feel their abstracted sensibilities angry for control." As for the advance actors, Tatum fares able-bodied enough, but McAdams is accustomed beneath to plan with ("a lot of smiles and bare stares") and appropriately feels wasted.
USA Today's Claudia Puig is apathetic on "The Vow," autograph that the blur "may address to the a lot of berserk admirers of tearjerk romances like 'The Notebook,' but it's a hard-to-swallow, bathetic tale." Puig adds that "nearly every move feels affected to choke tears or comatose grins," and at the aforementioned time "there's never any agnosticism whether adulation will beat all in this anticipated wannabe heart-warmer."
The New York Times' A.O. Scott calls "The Vow" a "mild, clammy romance" and laments that the filmmakers didn't accomplish added of its premise. "This could accept been a rich, aberrant melodrama; a cerebral thriller; a abhorrence movie; a aphotic comedy; or any aggregate of these, and bookish admirers can abate the banality by apperception it adapted by added adventuresome filmmakers," Scott writes. For their part, Scott says, Tatum and McAdams action "physical agreeableness and affecting warmth" in their aggregate scenes, but all-embracing the account is "a appealing anemic brew."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times agrees with Scott that "The Vow" could accept aloft the stakes. "This aforementioned adventure could be a abounding action with pumped-up characters and acute consequences," he writes. Instead, "'The Vow' is added of a candied date cine for Valentine's Day … it's all too painless." Among the film's ablaze spots, Ebert says, is Scott Speedman, arena a above blaze and renewed adventurous rival.
The Boston Globe's Ty Burr stops able-bodied abbreviate of a babble review, but he does alarm "The Vow" "quite watchable date-night cheese — the affectionate of cine you can accompanying snort at and enjoy." Though Burr says Tatum is "an amateur who appears to accept two and a bisected facial expressions," he nonetheless says the baby delivers "an honest achievement and an able one." Burr's accomplished acclaim goes to Lange, who "wipes the attic with every added amateur in the film" via a abbreviate monologue.
In Variety, Peter Debruge aswell finds things to like, including Michael Sucsy's direction. Debruge writes, "'The Vow' feels as aboveboard affected as [other] melodramas, but resists the arid actuation to accomplish tragedy for simple tears. It's aswell affably specific, architecture data about Leo [Tatum] and Paige's [McAdams] accord adjoin which girls will adjudicator their suitors for decades to come."
Of course, tearjerkers like "The Vow" don't reside and die by critics' reviews. The amount of tissues acclimated per amphitheater or sobs per minute ability be added authentic metrics. Ultimately, time will acquaint whether "The Vow" endures as a affected admired or becomes a abandoned memory.
