I happened to see the movie The Age of Adaline the other day and ended up over thinking the movie more than I wanted to. The story sounds pretty cool. A woman that never ages. There are so many directions you can go with that story, so how did this movie do? My friends and I debated a lot through this movie about what we would do if we were the characters.
The Age of Adaline review
The story is about a woman named Adaline (Blake Lively) who hasn’t aged past 29 since 1937. The movie deals with the question of “What if you could live forever” and the problems that Adaline experiences from dealing with it. As soon as I read the concept for this movie, I became instantly intrigued.
The beginning of this movie is very slow, so I suggest watching it at night or whenever you want something with not a lot of action. I couldn’t imagine watching this during the day when you are active and more alert.
I haven’t seen Blake Lively in other movies before, so this was my first time to see her performance. I’m not sure if it’s the character that she played or not, but she was extremely calm and she rarely showed emotion in her voice. Don’t get me wrong, she was gorgeous in this movie, but Adaline the character was kind of boring in my opinion. However, it was really interesting to see her throughout different time periods in history.
Adaline was born in 1908 and due to some accident, she never ages. Her daughter is the only one that knows her secret because Adaline has trouble trusting people since her husband passed away early in their marriage.
There is a narrator that pops up from time to time. These scenes felt unnatural and took me out of the movie. I don’t know, maybe it was the narrator’s voice that felt wrong. It could have also been the script and delivery. Either way, I felt the narration wasn’t really needed. The director should have tried to find a different way of informing the audience.
One day Adaline meets a man named Ellis (Michiel Huisman) at a New Year’s party. He comes off creepy and downright desperate. Is that considered an attractive trait these days? I must have missed that memo somewhere. It’s probably not the actor’s fault, but I felt the Ellis character tried to present himself as sophisticated and deep when he really came off as a stalker and shallow.
The movie’s pace moves a bit too slow until the second half of the film when Ellis’s father, William (Harrison Ford) enters the story. After that, the plot finally goes somewhere and becomes more interesting. I really did enjoy watching Harrison Ford’s performance as William and he made any scene worth watching. I just wish the story would have focused more on the relationship between William and Adaline more than it did. William came off as way more interesting than his son Ellis.
The Ending
The ending was just too “convenient” and full of “oh come on” for me to be satisfied. Yeah, it has the right amount of closure to make everyone feel good, but the movie was doing so well until the final act. I still have issues with Ellis, the main love interest because I’m not convinced he was the one for Adaline to be with, especially after learning about her lover from the 60s. Throughout all of the decades that she lived, she went with the guy that stalks people at their job?
Final Thoughts
This movie is probably a bit too slow for a lot of people, but I actually enjoyed it especially for night watching when everything feels more relaxed and quiet. I wish the movie would have gone in a different direction with the concept, but if you watch The Age of Adaline, you’ll be sure to find something that you would have done differently than the main character which makes for great sofa talk. I dare you to watch this movie with others and not find something to comment about.