Eternal youth gets old very quickly in The Age of Adaline
REVIEW: In The Age of Adaline, Blake Lively is struck by lightning and must stay 29 forever. You’ll feel as you’ve just turned 100 by the end.
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The Age Of Adaline (M)
Director: Lee Toland Krieger (Celeste & Jesse Forever)
Starring: Blake Lively, Michael Huisman, Harrison Ford, Amanda Crew, Ellen Burstyn.
Rating: *1/2
Coming down with a severe youth-ache
REMEMBER the good old days when you could make anything happen in a movie by simply attributing it to the mystical after-effects of a lightning strike?
It was widely thought those days ended in August 2011 with the release of The Change-Up. That was the one where Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman copped a body-swap after a thunderbolt hit the fountain in which they both happened to be peeing.
Well, now those good old days are back, thanks to a rather bad new movie called The Age Of Adaline.
We open in the 1930s. Adaline (Blake Lively) is 29 years of age, and speeding home one stormy night to be with her young daughter.
The car spins out of control, plunging into an icy body of water where it is soon after hit by lightning. The zillion-volt surge of sky-electricity not only saves Adaline’s life. It sticks a whopping big pin in it.
For the rest of her days, Adaline will be always be 29 years old.
Awkward, huh? Don’t think so? Do the math.
By the year 2015 — in which much of the film is set — Adaline’s kid will look like her great-grandma.
To avoid the suspicions of neighbours, work colleagues and the feds (who nearly collared her once for a medical research experiment, just like E.T.), Adaline must change her name, address, job and banking details every few years.
Eternal beauty ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. Though a powerful guy-magnet no matter the era, Adaline has had enough of the love-’em-leave-’em thing.
If only Adaline could meet a man with whom she could share the sad secret of her calendar-defying condition?
And if only that man (Michael Huisman) was not the son of another man (Harrison Ford) she used to go out with as a hippie in the 1960s?
Awkward, huh? Still don’t think so? Well just wait until you see how ungainly and no-brainly poor Ms Lively is made to look by her inertly-scripted character.
Seriously, the energy levels are so low throughout this picture, it would take at least five lightning strikes — and perhaps the same number of people wizzing in a fountain — to detect a regular pulse.
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Originally published as Eternal youth gets old very quickly in The Age of Adaline
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