Blake Lively has been in the headlines a lot lately following brouhaha surrounding the on-set process of creating her hit movie It Ends with Us. While that’s been the narrative driving the news in recent weeks, last night I was perusing around within my Netflix subscription while my husband was at a game and I was happy to see my favorite Lively film is in the Top 10 right now.
What is it? None other than The Age Of Adaline. A darling movie that came out a decade ago now in 2015, Lively stars in the film as a woman born in the early 20th century who stops aging after an accident. In the age of McCarthyism, the government finds out and she slowly grows more skittish, consistently moving and not accepting love for years. Yet, a chance sequence of events changes her mind decades later.
The movie was #6 in the U.S. when I decided to watch it streaming for the first time last night, and I don’t regret it, though if you need a little upsell, here’s what I have for you to sell you.
Why The Age Of Adaline Is Worth Streaming
- We always talk about Blake Lively’s fashion sense in the context of Gossip Girl outfits, but actually The Age Of Adaline is where it’s at.
- The movie’s sentimental tone is never maudlin and is downright cheery compared to a lot of the meta comedies and “modern” romances we’ve gotten in recent years.
- Due to the lack of aging element, Ellen Burstyn plays Lively’s daughter in the film and it is delightful.
- Harrison Ford is in this time-spanning movie and he is not wielding either a whip or a blaster pistol.
- Blake Lively’s Lily Bloom character is all into flowers in It Ends With Us but I much prefer her obsession with books in this film.
Lively is so picture perfect in the role it’s hard to believe it was nearly a Katherine Heigl vehicle, but that’s a true story as well.
To me, Age of Adaline is tonally the sort of story I would have wanted It Ends with Us’ Lily Bloom to be in. However, given the context of the Colleen Hoover novel, which is intensely about domestic abuse, it has seemed like there was some dissonance between the floral-dressed character the actress seemingly wanted to promote and what the title was supposed to be about, all of which has come up in the separate legal complaints from Justin Baldoni and Lively herself.
But it’s nice to remember there was a simpler time and a more endearing (and enduring movie) that we can stream whenever we want. I already threw it on last night and really had a great time revisiting it. So, if you haven’t given The Age of Adaline a chance, yet, I’d highly recommend it as one of Lively’s best projects. It’s certainly my favorite.
