Bookshelf Battle

It’s an eternal romance that makes you think about the fragility of life and love.

Bookshelf Q. Battler here to review the crap out of The Age of Adaline.

Warning:  spoilers to come.

The incomparable Blake Lively, star of stage, screen and many of Bookshelf Q. Battler’s fantasies stars as Adaline Bowman.  Born at the turn of the Twentieth Century, she experiences a freak accident that leaves her ageless.  No matter how many years pass, she continues to remain young and beautiful.

TRAILER – Age of Adaline – Lionsgate

When Adaline hits her forties, people begin asking questions about how she’s managed to remain so youthful and so her life of solitude begins.  Afraid to reveal her secret, she packs up and moves to a new place every ten years, taking on a new identity every time she does so.

Tragically, she refuses to look for love as she figures it will be too heartbreaking when she grows old while a significant other remains young.

Only Adaline’s daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn) is in on the secret.

Flemming has grown to become an old woman in her eighties while her mother remains forever young and this premise makes for some of the most moving scenes I’ve seen on the big screen in a long time.

Face it.  No matter how old you get, your parents will still treat you like a kid and you’ll still feel like a kid around them.

Like a youngster with some difficult news to share with a stern parent, we see the octogenarian Flemming struggle as she tells her mother that she wants to move to a nursing home in Arizona, which will make visits more difficult.  And just like a stern parent, the physically young (yet actually old) Adaline makes her disapproval of the idea known.

It’s definitely a scene the viewer isn’t used to.  You have the elderly Burstyn squaring off against the young Lively and yet Lively’s in charge while Burstyn comes off as a kid who’s disappointed her mommy.

That’s acting, folks.  It’s too bad I’m not a member of the Academy because I’d nominate this movie for best picture just based on the scenes between mother and daughter alone.

The film isn’t without its flaws.  There’s a narrator who is a bit corny who spoon feeds us some of the plot points, thus violating the ever looming “show don’t tell rule” that storytellers are supposedly honor bound to follow.  However, I like to think I’m not beholden to rules and given the unique nature of the film, I’m not sure how some of the information could have been provided without a narrator stepping in.

To avoid throwing out any more spoilers, I’ll just say that the film takes a turn when Adaline meets a man in the present day who makes her think twice about a life of solitude, only to quickly be reminded why she’s found such a life to be necessary in the past.

Harrison Ford, Michael Huisman and Kathy Baker round out the cast while Anthony Ingruber delivered such a spot on recreation of a young version of Harrison Ford that I almost thought he was going to crack a whip and run from a boulder.

Meanwhile, this film marks a turning point in Lively’s career.  We’ve known for a long time she’s hot…but damn, this hot chick can act.

Who knew I had it in me to be a hopeless romantic, 3.5 readers?  I thought my heart grew heart grew two sizes too small long ago.

What can I say?  The film moved me.

Dudes, let me help you out here.  Bring your women to this movie because it’s totally going to move them too and then you’ll get a little smoochy smoochy action.

Just don’t tell your lady that I told you to take her.  Make it out like it was all your idea.

Don’t worry.  Only 3.5 people read this damn blog anyway.

STATUS:  Shelf worthy.