The Age of Adaline

Starring: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, and Ellen Burstyn
Directed by: Lee Toland Krieger
Screenplay by: Salvador Paskowitz, Allison Burnett, and J. Mills Goodloe

     Wouldn't it be wonderful to live forever?  Based on this movie, probably not, especially if you're the only one who can live forever.
     Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) is born on January 1, 1908.  As a young woman, she is involved in an accident that changes her life.  She is immune to aging and becomes essentially immortal.  Fast forward over 80 years to the present day; her daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn) is an old woman and Adaline still looks exactly the same.  Nobody can know her secret other than her daughter.  Her inability to age has made for an extraordinarily difficult life.  She must constantly be on the move and change her identity so people do not get suspicious.  It also is difficult for her to create close relationships with people, until Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman) comes along.
    Ellis is a young philanthropist whom Adaline meets at a New Year's eve party.  He has a strong liking toward her and constantly begs her to go out with him.  After some time, they go to spend the weekend with his parents, William (Harrison Ford) and Kathy (Kathy Jones).  While there, Adaline's past comes back to haunt her, forcing her to make a decision that will change her life forever.  Will she keep running from her secret and everyone she knows and cares about?  Or will she stop running?
    What if we could live forever?  That's the question people have been asking for an incredibly long time.  What would it be like if we could avoid death altogether?  Wouldn't it get lonely after a while? If you use this movie to answer these questions, you may not like the answer you're given.  There have been countless movies about heroes and villains attempting to gain immortality as if it were a good thing to be able to live forever.  This is a film about an ordinary woman put into this extraordinary situation.  She is immune to the ravages of time, but nobody else around her is.  She is forced to watch everyone around her age while she stays young forever.
     Here's the problem; there is no way possible that this could happen to anybody.  It's almost like a bad science fiction concept.  Hugh Ross's occasional narration helps the story along in some places, especially at the beginning, but there are moments when it feels like a tremendous interruption, sometimes about things that are complete nonsense.  This is a film that viewers can really get sucked into and the narration truly does feel like an interruption at times.  A little less narration might have made this a better film.
     Adaline is a woman clearly stuck in the past mentally.  Physically she adapts well to the times but mentally, it's like she has not left the 1940s at times.  This is apparent in the mother-daughter exchanges.  It is odd to see Ellen Burstyn playing Blake Lively's daughter in the film, but you just have to roll with it.
      There is a good romance story between Adaline and Ellis but at points, it feels too much like a romantic melodrama film and not the fictional biopic the film truly is.  Blake Lively and Michiel Huisman work well together on screen, even though in the beginning it may seem that they don't make a very good couple.
     Blake Lively delivers an excellent performance, commanding the show throughout the entire duration of the movie.  This is a film that proves not only that she is beautiful, but can act well too.
     The Age of Adaline is definitely a movie you just have to roll with.  It's explained in a strange fashion, making her condition of being ageless seem plausible, when anyone with a brain in their head knows better.  This is a very well crafted film with somewhat of an epic sense through the score by Rob Simonsen.  It's the kind of movie you can truly lose yourself watching.
    I give The Age of Adaline a B+.