The Age of Adaline

This review may contain spoilers.

It's funny how a film about someone never aging made me feel like I lost hours of my life watching it. I would give The Age of Adaline a 4.5/10.

This film had a great concept behind it, especially because this film would fall into the romance genre so this was fairly original. I also thought that the pacing of the film as a whole wasn't too bad and worked really well with the structure of the plot.

Anthony Ingruber, who played Young William Jones, was a display of some of the best casting I've seen; he had Ford's mannerism and tone completely nailed in his performance.

However the best performance of this film was Harrison Ford, who played William Jones. He was very charismatic in his demeanour, making his usual gruff attitude work for him rather than against him in this role. The compassion and adoration he brought in his chemistry with both Lively and Baker was really genuine. Yet I think what really sold me on his performance was his wild erratic moments, the parts where he looked convinced he had gone insane. It felt very real and very manic, a really well rounded portrayal.

The Age of Adaline played into stereotypical romance genre writing and dialogue while alienating itself from one of the most interesting parts of the film's dramatic conflict: Adaline's fear of being caught for experimentation. We get maybe one or two scenes in which her fears seem validated but apart from this she seems to have a fairly safe and ordinary life. I also thought that the very unnecessary explanation of why Adaline didn't age was tedious, why use science that doesn't exist to explain impossible phenomenon in a romance film? I also thought that the cinematography and editing was rather bland; in fact some of the editing took away from high moments of tension in the way that it was cut. The score for this film fell very easily into the background and left little to no impression upon me.

Blake Lively, who played Adaline Bowman, was a terrible leading lady; she was very boring and withdrawn in how she portrayed her character. Michiel Huisman, who played Ellis Jones, felt very artificial and had some terrible cringe-worthy dialogue. Ellen Burstyn, who played Flemming, felt like she was confused about how to play her role; she acted like a child even though she was meant to be a woman who'd lived a full life. Kathy Baker and Amanda Crew, who played Kathy Jones and Kikki Jones respectively, lacked screen time and stupendously underused. Hugh Ross, who voiced Narrator, was the kind of character and presence that snapped you right out of the film; they were unnecessary and a major negative point of the film.