Film Review: Intoxicating ‘The Age of Adaline’ a Featherweight Fantasy

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Average: 5 (1 vote)

CHICAGO – “The Age of Adaline” is a beautifully shot featherweight fantasy that remains charming as long as you don’t think about it too hard, or at all.  At one point one character asks another why he loves Adaline, and he replies “because she makes no sense.” The same could be said for this movie. It doesn’t make a lick of sense but I enjoyed it and it’s intoxicating in its own way. It goes down easy like a good “Manhattan” or some other vintage cordial of the era.  

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

Blake Lively stars as Adaline, a pretty young woman who has a Zelig-like quality of being involved in just about every major event to happen in San Francisco in the first half of the 20th century. She’s born just after the great earthquake after all, on new years eve and gets herself into the movies when Thomas Edison himself comes around with his movie camera. After her husband dies in an accident, while building the Golden Gate bridge no less, she is caught in a freak snowstorm while driving to see their daughter.

Through a combination of cosmic events, a car accident and a lightning strike, Adaline emerges with the ability to never age. She will eternally be 29 forever, even while her own daughter grows up and eventually starts calling herself her own mama’s grandma to keep up appearances. Far from being a gift, “The Age Of Adaline” sees this supernatural fountain of youth as an isolating burden. She is young but outside of her own daughter she lacks someone to grow old with. So she settles for a life on the run especially after the G-Men get whiff of her unusual condition and try to take her off to a secret government lab.   

“The Age of Adaline” opens everywhere on April 24th. Featuring Blake Lively, Harrison Ford, Michiel Huisman, Ellen Burstyn, Amanda Crew and Kathy Baker. Screenplay by J. Mils Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz. Directed by Lee Toland Krieger. Rated “PG-13”

StarContinue reading for Spike Walters’ full review of “The Age of Adaline”

Blake Lively
Blake Livelyin ‘The Age of Adaline’
Photo credit: Lionsgate

StarContinue reading for Spike Walters’ full review of “The Age of Adaline”

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