The Age of Adaline

I'm not sure where to start with this movie, or how exactly I feel about it. Throughout the film I kept trying to look for a deeper meaning or message the film was trying to push, but it just ends up being a very average love story where the supporting cast is much better than the star.

Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) was born in 1908, but due to a freak accident involving snow, freezing water and lightning, she somehow loses the ability to age, not just superficially, but all her organs remain intact as well. On New Years Eve 2014, she meets a handsome man by the name of Ellis (Michiel Huisman) who falls for her. Adaline is torn between her attraction to Ellis and the fact that she knows she will never age as long as they are together.

It takes quite a while for this film's plot to get moving into territory where actual events take place. The majority of the first act is made up of conveniently placed flashbacks describing how Adaline got her bizarro powers, all triggered by a newsreel she watches at the San Francisco Public Library where she works. I feel as though these flashbacks were used up all too quickly at the beginning and instead of using them as reveals throughout the film, we are shown others that seem like they were hastily put together and shoehorned in. These are narrated by Hugh Ross, who also narrated The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, and his inclusion to me seems like director Lee Toland Krieger was somehow trying to elevate this film to something it isn't.

The film also suffers from some perspective issues, as it jumps around a bit and makes the film seem a bit disjointed. The first act focuses on Adaline's past and the second on the present, but the third act shifts to the perspective of a whole different character entirely, Ellis' father William (played surprisingly by Harrison Ford), who had a close relationship with Adaline in the 60s. While this is only a minor problem, it does mess with the structure a bit.

It may come as a shock to some (especially those Gossip Girl fans out there), but Blake Lively can't particularly act. She just kind of chews the scenery and stares blankly at whoever she is sharing the screen with. Luckily the supporting cast does its job. Michiel Huisman is a likeable and charismatic love interest and does well being goofy when he needs to. Ellen Bustyn plays Adaline's daughter and is much more energetic than Lively ever is. Harrison Ford's reveal in the film is almost as shocking as his fake goatee.

The Age of Adaline has many flaws surrounding its shoddy love story, unexplored sci-fi tangents and missed opportunity as an episode of The X-Files set in the 50s. Lively proves that her acting ability is only skin deep and doesn't branch out more than a few sighs and a thousand yard stare.