'The Age of Adaline' - Movie Review

Blake Lively plays Adaline Bowman who lives in modern San Francisco, age 106 - but looking 29. This is explained by the voice-over, which also walks us through the car accident (circa 1937), death, and lightning strike that stopped her aging. When the FBI decides they need to know why she seems to be 29 even though she's past fifty, she starts moving and changing identities every ten years. Not surprisingly, the movie is about ... a change of circumstances.

Lively does a good job as the old but ever youthful Adaline, while Ellen Burstyn plays her daughter (who is in her 60s or 70s) and Michiel Huisman a persistent and charming suitor as she approaches her next move and new identity. It's a relatively slow-paced and talky movie - which I have no issue with - and they do it fairly well. Unfortunately, the wrap-up suffers from severe predictability. Up until that point it was engaging, well acted, and fairly well thought out.

SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you have any intention of watching this movie. It's just me getting pissy about predictability.

As Adaline races away from both her former and current suitor, I thought "she'll have a car accident. There may even be lightning." I was only marginally off - a woman of 100 years of age, already specifically shown to be a very good driver, makes an incredibly stupid driving mistake. Yup. Next up, lightning - because yes, she's died again. Oh, we've substituted a defibrillator. Next up: she'll find a gray hair because she's resumed aging. Wow, look at that. She did. I think the author thought (s)he was being clever with the symmetry of the car accidents, but instead it feels predictable, obvious, and stupid. I get that it's a romance and I have no issue with her settling in with the charming guy: that's practically a given. But that also puts the onus on the writer to be more creative and interesting elsewhere.