On February 9th, Greenfield Garden Cinemas was packed with Deerfield students. I have seen movies at this theater in Greenfield before, and occasionally run into other DA kids, but never like this. There must have been twenty to thirty girls in a single theater. And we weren’t the only ones who went to see The Vow this Valentine’s weekend – it ranked number one in the box office with an income of forty-two million dollars.

The Vow is a dramatic, if not tragic, love story based upon true events of a young couple whose relationship is derailed by a devastating car accident. Paige (Rachel McAdams) slips into a coma after going through the windshield upon impact.

When Paige wakes up, her husband Leo (Channing Tatum) is startled to discover that she does not remember the past five years. Paige does not know who Leo is, nor does she remember her career as a sculptor, moving from the suburbs to the city or her estranged relationship with her family.

Leo spends the rest of the movie trying to rekindle his relationship with Paige with great difficulty. In her mind, she is still in love with her ex-fiancé Jeremy (Scott Speedman) and resists many of Leo’s attempts to help her regain her memory. He assures her that in a way, she is lucky because she gets to re-experience their falling in love.

McAdams and Tatum are both romance movie heavyweight champs and their performances, while sweet and convincing, do not live up to the success of their roles in earlier films (McAdams in Nicholas Sparks’s heart-wrenching classic The Notebook and Tatum in Dear John).

Unfortunately, the audience does not get to watch this second-time-around romance unfold, as the movie ends before the couple officially get back together (though a fairytale ending is implied). The greatest, most romantic parts of the film are shown in the trailer. While The Vow had all of the makings of a great movie, it fell short of its potential.