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• DVD & Streaming
• Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

• February 10, 2012
• Rachel McAdams as Paige; Channing Tatum as Leo; Jessica Lange as Rita Thornton; Sam Neill as Bill Thornton; Jessica McNamee as Gwen; Scott Speedman as Jeremy

Home Release Date

• May 8, 2012
• Michael Sucsy

Distributor

• Sony Pictures

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Do you believe in love at first sight?

Leo might. The moment he saw Paige and her Chicago parking permit, he knew he had to ask her out. His come-on line? We share the same parking region, so we should grab a drink together—out of respect for our zone compatibility.

Two weeks later, Paige says she loves him. Before long, he’s asking her to move in via a message spelled out in breakfast blueberries. They get married in a makeshift service at an art museum. They’re set up to live happily ever after, until—

Bam! On a snowy Chicago evening, a truck smashes into the back of their tiny car, sending Paige through the windshield and both of them to the hospital. Leo isn’t hurt too badly, but Paige has suffered serious trauma to her brain. She’s kept in a forced coma until doctors deem it’s safe to bring her out.

When that moment comes, Leo perches expectantly by her bedside, watching his beloved groggily take in her surroundings. She looks at him, puzzled. When she’s told that she was in a car accident, she slowly asks if anyone else was hurt. Leo stares at her for a moment.

“Paige, you know who I am, right?”

“Yeah. You’re my doctor.”

Paige has no memory of the accident, of her time with Leo, of the last several years. She’s no longer the independent artist he knew—the lovable yet somewhat embittered woman who’d severed all ties to her family. This Paige remembers being in law school. She remembers her mother and father with deep affection. And she remembers being engaged … to another man.

Leo has a certificate and wedding video to prove they’re married and memorabilia to show how madly in love they were. But for Paige, Leo’s a stranger and the life she was living is, literally, unimaginable. For this new Paige—this old Paige—home isn’t with Leo anymore.

Love at first sight? Leo might still believe in that. But he’s not so sure he’s going to be so lucky the second time around.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

“Love is patient, love is kind,” the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians. “It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

Paul’s vision of love is very often mirrored by Leo in The Vow . Thrust into a new life with a wife who doesn’t know him, much less love him, Leo is in a tight spot. But he doesn’t try to rush things. He’s patient and kind—desperately hoping that Paige will regain her memories but content to let her process this new life at her own speed. It’s painful to watch. You know he wants to wrap his arms around her and make everything OK. But she won’t let that happen. And when it seems as though her memories aren’t going to come back anytime soon, Leo settles on a radical course of action: He decides to take Paige out on a first date. “I gotta make my wife fall in love with me again,” he tells a friend.

Of course we can’t blame Paige for the distance between them. She tells Leo that she deeply wants to return his love. That she doesn’t want to hurt him. But the last Paige remembers, she was in love with another guy. And as she essentially weaves together a new life from the tatters of her old one(s), she does her best to make what she feels are the right decisions.

While Paige’s loss of memory would seem an unmitigated disaster, it actually opens the door for something beautiful: Before, she had walked away from her family, wanting nothing to do with any of them. But because of the accident, her mother and father come back into her life. And while there’s still a lot of baggage to sort through—for one thing, Mom and Dad flagrantly shove Leo out of the picture—Paige and her parents seem well on the way to true reconciliation at the end.

We learn of an affair happening in the midst of a long-term marriage. And when the wife is asked why she didn’t leave her husband over the matter, she says, “I chose to stay with him for all the things he did right. I chose to forgive him.”

Spiritual Elements

Nothing of note to report here. But there should have been. More on that in the Conclusion.

Sexual & Romantic Content

The Vow doesn’t confuse love with sex. But there’s still sensuality at play here. Right before the accident, Paige begins to smooch and make out with Leo. “A girl’s guaranteed to get preggers if she does it in a car,” she says. Leo gives Paige a negligee, and it’s clear that she’s a frequent overnight guest before they get hitched. Pre-injury, the two are shown in various stages of foreplay, and in one scene they lie on a couch in presumably post-coital slumber, barely covered by a blanket. Then, on a post-accident date, they strip down to their undies and jump into the lake. Back at their apartment, Paige and Leo begin to kiss passionately. She tells him that he’s not getting further than first base—then amends it to second. There’s talk of tickling turning Paige on. Leo plays a suggestive voice mail for her, hoping it’ll spur some recollection.

We see Paige in a towel and Leo shirtless. Leo exposes his backside to the camera as he walks naked to the bathroom. Audiences don’t see him from the front, but Paige—who, remember, thinks of Leo as a stranger—does. “It’s not funny,” she says, snickering a little (and wearing only underwear herself) as Leo covers himself. “You should knock.”

Post-accident Paige has a thing for one-time fiancé Jeremy. She visits him at his office and the two share a hug—then a kiss. “Habit, I guess,” she explains, perhaps partly to herself. At a party, Jeremy tells Leo about the encounter, goading him. When Leo tells Jeremy that Paige “outgrew” him once before, and that she’ll likely do so again, Jeremy snaps back, “I will mull that over while I’m in bed with your wife.”

Violent Content

When the truck smashes into the back of Paige and Leo’s car, the scene shifts into slow motion as Paige floats forward, her head smashing through the windshield in a spray of glass. The camera then pulls back for a bird’s-eye view of her lying, motionless, on the hood of the car.

Leo punches Jeremy in the face, drawing blood.

Crude or Profane Language

A half-dozen s-words. We hear either one, two or three instances of the following swears: “h‑‑‑,” “d‑‑n,” “a‑‑” and “d‑‑k.” God’s name is abused at least 10 times, once with “d‑‑n.”

Drug & Alcohol Content

Wine and other alcoholic beverages are consumed frequently, making appearances during every date, party and get-together. Though no one gets obviously drunk, it’s possible that alcohol plays a part in Leo punching Jeremy. “You could use a drink,” Paige’s father tells him in advance of the confrontation, carrying a bottle of Scotch. “I’ve already had several,” Leo says, but accepts another. Paige orders a blueberry Mojito.

Other Noteworthy Elements

Leo passes gas in the car, and Paige solemnly rolls up the windows. “That is so twisted,” Leo says, “but totally romantic.” The two get married in a museum without the institution’s permission, requiring them to flee as soon as the vows are exchanged.

Paige’s family, worried about losing contact with her again, keep a painful family secret from her. Even worse, they use her injury as a way to pull her away from her husband.

For weeks, maybe months, Leo urgently tries to get his wife back. He does everything he can to jog her memory. When that doesn’t work, he decides to try to make her fall for him all over again. But it’s all for naught it seems: Paige, stuck in her life of years earlier, still looks at Jeremy like a lover. And her family, in an effort to reclaim their little girl, pushes Leo away too. He’s spending so much time desperately trying to woo Paige that, slowly, his life begins to unravel. Bills stack up. His business—a startup recording studio—suffers.

Paige’s father has an out: Divorce her , he says, and I’ll make your overdue bills go away . Leo spurns the offer … at first. But it’s not working with Paige. She’s not happy with him playing this role of legally sanctioned interloper. She loves another man. In her mind, she never really married him to begin with.

So Leo signs the divorce papers. And he hates doing it with all his heart.

It’s hard to classify the scene. Some might argue that this is Leo’s ultimate display of sacrificial love—giving his wife the life she seems to want and need. Divorce is wrong, but should we be held to vows we have no memory of?

The movie’s not quite sure. But for the couple whose real-life story inspired The Vow , the answer is yes.

Kim and Krickitt Carpenter had been married just 10 weeks when a car crash robbed 18 months of memories from Krickitt. But they didn’t split. For three years, they worked at rebuilding their relationship, and they renewed their vows in a second ceremony—a testament not just to sacrificial love, but to a sacred commitment.

“You make a promise before God with your wedding vows,” Krickitt said. “You have to take that seriously.”

The Carpenters are Christians, and they decided to live out the requirements of their faith in a really extreme way. The Vow , stripped of its real-life Christian core, is still a moving recitation of love in action, romance under fire and the gallantry of a man who would even give up his own heart for the sake of his girl. And yet the story loses something in translation. The Vow’ s vow is broken. And while that allows us to see the beauty of sacrificial love, we miss out on an equally important part of love—unflagging commitment.

In the film it’s not Leo and Paige who model the hard, sometimes heartrending commitment that lives at the core of the marriage covenant. It’s another couple, the couple who struggles through an affair. Their situation is one in which most Christians would admit the justified possibility of divorce. So the fact that the wife chooses to forgive her husband becomes perhaps one of the most moving onscreen moments.

The Vow is about romantic love—an inspiring, sacrificial, beautiful sort of romantic love, to be sure. But it loses sight of its own title and, in so doing, fails to talk about another side of love: the hard side of love, the love we choose to cling to even when neither we nor our partner is very lovable at all.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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• User reviews

A car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo works to win her heart again. A car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo works to win her heart again. A car accident puts Paige in a coma, and when she wakes up with severe memory loss, her husband Leo works to win her heart again.

• Michael Sucsy
• Marc Silverstein
• Jason Katims
• Rachel McAdams
• Channing Tatum
• 228 User reviews
• 213 Critic reviews
• 43 Metascore
• 3 wins & 14 nominations

Top cast 36

• Bill Thornton

• Rita Thornton

• Dr. Fishman

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Channing Tatum revealed in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that he wore an oversized prosthetic ACE bandage sleeve for the scene where he walks naked in front of Rachel McAdams character in order to get a realistic reaction out of her. This was apparently the take that was used in the final cut. It is confirmed by the director that it was the first take.
• Goofs At the wedding scene where they exchange vows in the museum, Paige and Leo's friend is seen videotaping them from behind. However, when Paige replays the video after the accident, the camera angle is now from the front.

Leo : How do you look at the woman you love, and tell yourself that its time to walk away?

• Connections Featured in Maltin on Movies: The Vow (2012)
• Soundtracks Come On, Come On (Dean & Britta Remix) Written and Performed by Scott Hardkiss Courtesy of God Within Recordings, Inc. By arrangement with Zync Music Group LLC

User reviews 228

• Jan 28, 2012
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• February 10, 2012 (United States)
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Official site
• Yêu Lại Từ Đầu
• Millenium Park, Downtown, Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Screen Gems
• Spyglass Entertainment
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $30,000,000 (estimated)
• $125,014,030
• $41,202,458
• Feb 12, 2012
• $196,114,570

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 44 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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The Vow is a gripping NXIVM exposé: Review

The immersive HBO documentary takes viewers inside Keith Raniere's sinister "self-help" group NXIVM.

Kristen Baldwin is the TV critic for EW

Documentaries about cults are a little like horror films; they provide us with the visceral thrill of seeing other people battle a terrifying monster — all while feeling secure in our superiority: We would never pick up a creepy hitchhiker or fail to check the back seat of a darkened car like those dolts on screen.

But cult leaders aren't always as simple to spot as machete-wielding maniacs, and the people who fall prey to their manipulation tactics are not the weak-minded nincompoops we'd prefer them to be. What's so chilling about The Vow — HBO 's immersive new docuseries about NXIVM, the New York-based "self-help group" brought down by charges of sexual slavery — is how vividly it illustrates the seductive and insidious ways these groups lure intelligent, well-meaning people into servitude.

Before NXIVM (pronounced "Nexium") became known as "that weird sex cult run by that girl from Smallville ," it began building its following as ESP NXIVM, an organization offering a variety of "personal development" seminars. (ESP stands for "Executive Success Programs.") The Vow opens with video of founder Keith Rainere — an innocuous-looking white guy with glasses and feathered, salt-and-pepper hair — making his sales pitch: "ESP NXIVM is a methodology that allows people to optimize their experience and behavior."

For Sarah Edmondson, a Vancouver-based actress looking for her "real purpose," and Mark Vicente, co-director of the 2004 "quantum fable" What the Bleep Do We Know? , the appeal was immediate. Both were searchers, looking for a way to do good in the world — and ESP NXIUM's "technology," including a targeted kind of therapy called Exploration of Meaning, seemed to hold the proverbial key. Vicente recalls his reaction after his first EM with NXIVM co-founder Nancy Salzman, which helped him overcome recurrent panic attacks: "I've arrived at the Federation, 50 years in the future, and they have hacked the human brain." Edmonson was equally overwhelmed by her EMs: "I really felt like I had this secret potion of understanding." In the simplest terms, NXIVM was a sort of spiritual Amway: Members earned color-coded sashes as they followed "The Stripe Path," taking expensive self-help courses and bringing in new recruits.

After moving to a suburb outside of NXIVM's Albany headquarters in 2004, Vicente was charged with the task of documenting Raniere and his organization. The Vow (premiering August 23 at 10 p.m.) has an astonishing cache of archival, promotional, and candid recordings, both video and audio, which gives the narrative an immediacy that can't be replicated by talking-head recollections. Rather than just hearing about Raniere's mysterious "rock star" charisma in the abstract, we watch NXIVM members sit at his feet, rapt, as the self-described genius philosophizes about ethics with a soft-spoken, disarming confidence.

Smallville star Allison Mack , who pleaded guilty last year to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges related to her role in NXIVM, does not participate directly in The Vow , but she appears throughout the series. We even see her first-ever conversation with Rainere, a man who would ultimately lead to her downfall, during one of his famous overnight volleyball games. It's an almost uncomfortably intimate moment: Mack and "Vanguard," as NXIVM members called Raniere, sit snugly on a bench, leaning their heads against the painted cement-block walls, talking about the actress' emotional connection to the arts. "The most excitement you've ever felt is yours to have all the time," says Raniere softly. "If you feel that art is necessary for that, that's almost a self-condemnation." The actress begins to cry and admits she's afraid to "let go" of some long-held beliefs about herself. The scene is all the more devastating knowing what's to come for Mack, and the women she recruited into NXIVM herself.

So how did all of this lead to a group of female NXIVM members being branded with Raniere and Mack's initials and coerced into sexual "slavery"? The Vow chronicles NXIVM's expansion in the early 2000s, as Vanguard oversaw the launch of a series of subgroups — "The Source," a public-speaking workshop led by Mack; a men's group called "Society of Protectors"; a fitness collective called "exo/eso," led by Vicente's wife, actress Bonnie Piesse (Aunt Beru in the Star Wars prequels) — and opened new centers in Vancouver, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and more.

Through all the growth, Vanguard's message remained the same: Comfort is an addiction, and you've gotta break the habit. The Vow lays bare the many ways Raniere and his team used this philosophy – on its face a tool for emotional empowerment — to shame people into suppressing their doubts about the program. Piesse began to experience her own misgivings while working her way down the Stripe Path, a process that soon dominated all of her waking hours and drove her deeper into debt. When she missed a meeting after nearly passing out from exhaustion, Piesse turned to Vanguard for guidance. His response? "You're blowin' it from a spiritual perspective," he told her on a middle-of-the-night walk. (Piesse recorded the conversation on her phone.) "You're enslaved to worry, enslaved to pettiness, enslaved to materialism… don't you want to be free?"

It was this type of manipulation that made the creation of a "secret sisterhood" of women within NXIVM called DOS ("Dominus Obsequious Sororium") possible. Sold as a type of "sorority," DOS required members to take a "vow of obedience" and turn over "collateral" — a videotaped confession of past misdeeds, say, or a nude photo. Edmondson says it was pitched to her as an exercise in self-actualization. As she explains to a reporter in episode 6, "If they had said, 'Hey, do you want to get Keith and Alison's initials branded on your vagina?' I definitely would have said no.'"

Edmondson later made headlines by going public with her branding in a New York Times interview in 2017 , along with Vicente and Piesse. The Vow offers a riveting behind-the-scenes chronicle of the months leading up to their decisions to leave NXIVM, from Vicente's tense phone calls with Raniere to Edmondson's final confrontation with employees at the Vancouver headquarters. They're later joined in their whistleblowing crusade by actress Catherine Oxenberg, who is desperate to extract her daughter India from DOS and Raniere's emotional prison.

The NXIVM scandal was global news three years ago, and plenty of viewers will already know how Raniere's story ends. But The Vow may be the closest we ever get to understanding why it was allowed to begin in the first place. Grade: A-

The Vow premieres Sunday, August 23 at 10 p.m. on HBO.

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I Married an Amnesiac

“The Vow” is a well-behaved, tenderhearted love story about impossibly nice people. It’s not even about whether they’ll get married. They’ve been happily married for four years. The problem is, she can’t remember them. She can’t even remember her husband.

Paige and Leo are a young Chicago couple. She’s a Lake Forest blue blood who angered her parents by dropping out of Northwestern law school, moving into the city and enrolling at the School of the Art Institute, where she sculpts clay into such forms that Leo mistakes a pile of fresh clay for one of her artworks. Leo has opened an independent recording studio, arguing that although everyone may be able to produce songs on their laptops, he can aim higher — at the heights of an old Sun Records session, for example.

They live happily. They are in love. She is estranged from her parents. They look great together, and as played by Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum why shouldn’t they? The actors bring a dreamy warmth to their roles. Then one snowy night, the two are rear-ended by a truck. He wakes up in the hospital. She remains in a drug-induced coma to assist her brain in reducing its swelling. When she recovers, she has no memory of ever meeting or being married to Leo.

Indeed, she thinks she is the same person she was before her life changed. She thinks she still lives with her folks ( Sam Neill and Jessica Lange ) and is still engaged to Jeremy ( Scott Speedman ). Her parents, who approved of Jeremy but not of Leo, couldn’t be happier, and expect to bring her home with them. Leo persuades her to come home with him and see if any memories return, but it’s as if she’s living with a stranger.

This film is based on the real-life story of Kim and Krickitt Carpenter; she never did regain her lost memories, but they’re together today, with two children. Paige and Leo don’t seem headed in that direction. Leo, it must be said, is a paragon of patience, taking Paige to their favorite date spots, reminding her she’s a vegetarian, showing her the studio she has forgotten. But all of this is alien to the old Paige; she she’s still attracted to Jeremy.

Scott Speedman is a good choice for the old fiance. From some camera angles, he reminds us a little of Wile E. Coyote. From head on, he’s friendly and handsome. He isn’t necessarily a bad guy. Nor are her parents evil, although there is something snaky about the Sam Neill character. They connive to take advantage of her memory loss, which has so conveniently eradicated all of the changes they disapprove of.

This same story could be a fraught melodrama with pumped-up characters and dire consequences. “The Vow” is more of a sweet date movie for Valentine’s Day; the women can identify with this poor Paige who belongs with the handsome Leo, and the guys can think that Rachel McAdams has just about the sweetest smile since Marisa Tomei . The more we discover about the story, indeed, the nicer a guy Leo turns out to be. The way the story resolves itself offers poetic justice.

But it’s all too painless. One can imagine the anguish of the case in real life. How, really, do you approach the subject of having sex with your husband if you don’t remember him? Especially when he is theoretically not the kind of man you would choose, and you believe you’re engaged to a man you love? “The Vow” never really grapples with those issues. It’s pleasant enough as a date movie, but that’s all.

A footnote. The movie is said to be set in Chicago. It struck me as strange that it has such a large number of second-unit shots of the city: skylines, elevated trains, the Music Box movie theater. Yet the couple itself is rarely seen in them. There is one nice shot of the newlyweds running from the Art Institute across a footbridge into Millennium Park and ending up under the Bean, but otherwise something fishy is going on. Yes, the movie was shot mostly in Toronto. Poor Toronto. Poor Chicago. Poor Paige and Leo. Poor Jeremy, even.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Rachel McAdams as Paige
• Channing Tatum as Leo
• Jessica Lange as Mrs. Thornton
• Sam Neill as Mr. Thornton
• Scott Speedman as Jeremy
• Jason Katims
• Marc Silverstein

Directed by

• Michael Sucsy

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The Vow Takes a Deep, Compelling Dive Into the NXIVM Cult

The opening moments of The Vow contain visual excerpts from what appears to be the best corporate retreat ever. Groups of people are seen playing volleyball, frolicking on green lawns, dashing together into lakes. The imagery suggests the men and women in this footage belong to a happy club that one would be very lucky to join.

But that club happens to be a dangerous cult, as this absorbing HBO docuseries about NXIVM (pronounced nexium ), an organization supposedly focused on wellness and self-actualization, demonstrates over the course of nine episodes. (Seven were made available in advance.) That revelation is not new. In 2017, a New York Times piece revealed that women within the organization were being physically branded as part of a sorority created within NXIVM that was supposed to empower women, but actually forced them to literally become slaves to others who acted as their masters. Previous reporting, most notably in the Albany Times Union in 2012, made the case that the head of NXIVM, Keith Raniere, had brainwashed multiple women in the group into serving as his loyal sexual partners.

None of this is breaking news if you followed any of these stories about NXIVM or Raniere’s downfall — The Vow notes shortly into the first episode (premiering on HBO’s broadcast and streaming platforms on Sunday, August 23) that Raniere, referred to internally as Vanguard, was eventually charged with multiple crimes, including racketeering, wire fraud, and sex trafficking. What is revealing and effective about The Vow , directed by Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, who worked together on the Oscar-nominated documentary The Square , is its ability to take its audience into the epicenter of this deceptive pseudo-business while key members are in the process of exposing its more sinister practices to the public.

The series is able to do this because Noujaim took some of NXIVM’s marquee Executive Success seminars in 2010 and remained in contact with people she met during the program. Also, perhaps more crucially, one of its key figures is filmmaker Mark Vicente, the co-director of the trippy film What the Bleep Do We Know!? and a disciple of Raniere’s who rose to the highest ranks of NXIVM leadership. Raniere asked Vicente to work on a documentary about him, so Vicente has tons of intimate footage of the so-called Vanguard that provides a spine around which to build this work of nonfiction.

The stereotype about cults and their leaders is that they appeal to their followers’ most woo-woo instincts, creating communes where members can live freely and, perhaps, engage in some free love. That’s more or less how another excellent docuseries about a cult, Netflix’s Wild Wild Country , depicts what attracted the community that gathered around the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in rural Oregon in the 1980s. NXIVM is different in that, on the surface, it appeals much more directly to the intellect and the psyche, which is why it’s so easy for otherwise intelligent people to get sucked into its vortex.

Noujaim and Amer take their time to explain how the Executive Success Program, or ESP, works by challenging people to rethink their assumptions about themselves, referred to as “limiting beliefs,” and their ideas about ethics and society. The lofty goal at the center of these sessions, as well as NXIVM more generally, is to make its students better people and the world a better place. It’s a little bit self-help and a little bit unconscious-bias training, accompanied by some decidedly weird rituals and flair. Sarah Edmondson, an actress who, alongside Vicente, also climbed the organization’s leadership ranks, says she initially was weirded out by the various colored sashes that members wear to signify what level they’ve achieved in their training. It’s a testament to the power of groupthink that Edmondson and others are able to tuck away their initial misgivings and center their entire lives around the world Raniere has constructed, a choice that eventually led to her having a permanently branded scar a few inches above her crotch.

The measured pacing and focus on NXIVM exposition makes The Vow drag occasionally in its initial episodes. But as this multilayered saga unfolds, that approach becomes an asset. The banality of the sessions and the establishment of the camaraderie among many of the NXIVM regulars makes it easy to understand why people like Edmondson and Vicente were lulled into false senses of security. As more twisted and abusive activities come to light, including the practices of DOS, the aforementioned slave-enabling sorority that former Smallville star and NXIVM member Allison Mack participated in, the nature of those seminars becomes even more sinister. Perhaps the best cover for being immoral is to announce that your main focus is on helping others do the right things.

Even though it’s clear from the beginning that NXIVM is going to fall apart, the series still generates tension as multiple once-loyalists decide to leave and fear what may happen to them if they do, starting with Vicente’s wife, Bonnie Piesse, whom he met in the program. We witness constant clandestine and (wisely, it turns out) recorded phone conversations between the NXIVM skeptics who are sharing information to build their cases, as well as arguments between those trying to escape and the loyalists who insist they are overreacting. As outrageous as some of the facts are — the ways in which Raniere and his cohorts harass certain women who left NXIVM are appalling, to put it mildly — Noujaim and Amer maintain a restrained approach. The storytelling in The Vow easily could have adopted a Tiger King –style “You’re not going to believe this” stance. Instead the series shows respect to those who were victimized by NXIVM and refrains from taking easy potshots at the group’s practices or even Raniere, who, especially when he’s dressed for his regular late-night volleyball games with a sweatband plastered across his forehead, doesn’t exactly exude “exalted one” vibes.

The story of NXIVM is massive. It’s impossible for every notable detail to make the final cut. That said, there are some omissions that seem significant. For example, investigative journalist Frank Parlato, who has written extensively about NXIVM over the years, is mentioned in early episodes and characterized as someone who isn’t always viewed as credible. But in the seventh episode, Parlato becomes a supporting figure in the series as he helps actress Catherine Oxenberg, whose daughter India refuses to leave NXIVM, in her attempt to get law enforcement involved in the situation. Given all the evidence Parlato has compiled and his willingness to help, he comes across as semi-heroic, albeit eccentric. A visit to his website, the Frank Report, reveals that it’s filled with reporting on NXIVM but also posts written by Roger Stone and at least one defense of QAnon, a juxtaposition that caused so much cognitive dissonance in my brain that it turned into a popping-confetti cannon. While it’s understandable that Noujaim and Amer decided that a whole sidebar on Parlato would be too distracting, this still raises the question of what other notable information or nuances may have been sliced out of the series.

Ironically, the recent focus in the news on the cultlike believers in QAnon conspiracy theories makes The Vow an especially relevant watch. While NXIVM coaches often preached the notion that trusting one’s intuition can be misleading — “Your intuition was just a feeling, a viscera,” Bonnie Piesse says in the second episode — the series is a testimony to how vital it is to check one’s gut and apply real, unvarnished critical thinking to events unfolding around us. Any of us can potentially have the wool pulled over our eyes by a dude who calls himself Vanguard, or anonymous online posters, or even a president. It’s what we do after we realize our vision has been obscured that truly defines whether we’re good or bad, and whether we’re safe or still in grave danger.

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‘the vow’: film review.

Cornball romantic stuff for girls who crave Valentine's Day and boys who want to please them.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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The Vow has the benefit of being based on a true story (a postscript shot reveals — big surprise — that the couple in question look nothing like Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum ), but its melodramatic premise more than anything resembles soapy tearjerkers of the ’30s and ’40s in which incredibly extreme predicaments prevented lovers from being together or mothers from holding on to their children. Such heart-tuggers have their appeal to some people in any era, but earnest hokum of this nature has become increasingly rare. And for a reason. The Bottom Line Cornball romantic stuff for girls who crave Valentine's Day and boys who want to please them.

Still, if it’s cast correctly and directed with a straight face, you can fool some of the people some of the time, and so it will likely be for this cocktail of contrivance. In the lulling opening scene, lovebirds Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum) emerge from the beautiful old Chicago cinema the Music Box on an enchanting snowy night, get in their car and are promptly rammed from behind by a truck, sending Paige flying through the windshield (in extremely slow motion).

PHOTOS: Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum Shine at ‘The Vow’ Premiere

The key to the film for dreamy-eyed girls ready, willing and anxious to capitulate is that Leo is truly in love with Paige. Reluctantly agreeing to return to their (very expensively appointed) downtown loft to see if a reintroduction to her old routine will begin to jar her memory loose, Paige isn’t even jolted into recognition by the sight of her hunky husband naked (from the rear, as far as the audience is concerned). But Leo perseveres and, through all manner of rejection, trouble from her parents and a downturn at the recording studio he runs, he dedicates himself to the proposition that, “I’ve got to make my wife fall in love with me again.”

VIDEO: ‘The Vow’ Stars Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams Talk Chemistry, Romance

In due course, he asks her out on a “first date,” gets her to skinny dip (with underwear) in Lake Michigan and accompanies her back to their old haunt, the Cafe Mnemonic (ha-ha). She still can’t remember Leo, who waits patiently and chastely (but often without his shirt on) through it all, even when Paige has no trouble remembering her high school amour Jeremy ( Scott Speedman ), whom she jilted but who wants to take advantage of the unusual situation to snatch his prize back from Leo’s grasp.

It’s hard to know how a woman is supposed to behave if she has a several-years memory gap, but McAdams makes this one pretty spunky, if clueless of what to make of this muscled guy who has nothing but great things to say about her and the times they had together. While limited in range, to be sure, Tatum is actually OK with what he has to do; he never strains to achieve something he’s not able to pull off, and he does make you believe he’s taken with this young lady to the exclusion of all others; he’s good to his vow.

Chicago gets to show off in a number of shots, particularly in the Grant Park lakefront area, but most of the film was shot in Toronto.

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‘The Vow, Part Two’ Is a Riveting NXIVM Legal Saga, and an Improvement on Season 1: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

Daniel D'Addario

Chief TV Critic

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In late summer 2020, “ The Vow ” emerged as a creepily potent hit docuseries , which grew virally as it rolled out. Plunging deep within little-understood “self-help group”-turned-cult NXIVM to examine the hold leader Keith Raniere had over his acolytes, the documentary series excelled when depicted sympathetic people in situations the average viewer likely could not imagine. How had these women allowed things to get so out of control that they’d agreed to be branded, or to starve themselves, or to voluntarily hand over compromising materials for potential blackmail? “The Vow” had no hard answers, but it was exacting and thorough in posing the questions.

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Salzman emerges as the star witness in this series, precisely because of her imperfections as an anti-Raniere messenger. Salzman can seem discomfitingly eager to share her truth on-camera, as though endless disclosure of her perspective would exonerate her; among her frustrations are that Raniere’s predations with the internal cabal “DOS” within NXIVM have overshadowed the good work the broader group did with its self-help curriculum, which may not be a tragedy that resonates as deeply with viewers.

People are obsessed with sex because, unlike coffee dates, it can be weaponized; to those closest to the center of NXIVM, though, a weapon may have looked a great deal more like a tool. (We later meet women whose self-professed experience of NXIVM was characterized more by abuse than by walking to get lattes.) Among the remarkably effective undercurrents of “The Vow, Part Two” is the mutability of truth, not simply shifting slightly according to perspective but dramatically inverting. One sincerely believes that, for Hatchette and Clyne, a line of argument set forth by Raniere’s defense attorney, that calling women branded by NXIVM “victims” is antifeminist, is sincere. (That attorney is shown telling a skeptical Megyn Kelly, then of NBC News, that “when men [get branded], they’re Marines.” And Salzman, for all that her eyes have been opened to aspects of Raniere’s crimes, does believe that others of NXIVM’s methods helped alleviate the symptoms of Tourette syndrome, something a disclaimer at the top of one episode disavows.

In all, this series builds upon and improves upon the work the franchise had already done — and stands out, too. There is no shortage of documentary footage being marshalled into projects that have a vaguely snarky or sarcastic view of its subjects; I’d cite the very fun and watchable 2021 “LuLaRich,” about a multi-level marketing scheme, as but one example. Even in documenting people whose vision and goals are opposed to those of the documentary, there’s a compassion and level of thought at work, here; a scene in which Raniere defenders dance outside the jail holding him is shot through not with snideness but with a sort of tender-hearted fascination. The first tragedy of NXIVM — the first many tragedies, perhaps — was in the harm it did to the women it scarred and starved and isolated from themselves. The next, harder story is of the women who recall it with fondness.

“The Vow, Part Two” debuts Monday, October 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO , with new episodes following weekly.

HBO. Six episodes (all screened for review).

• Production: Executive producers: Karim Amer, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Nina Fialkow, Lyn Davis Lear, Mike Lerner, Jehane Noujaim, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Sara Rodriguez.

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Kindergarten: the musical.

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• Parents Say 0 Reviews
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Common Sense Media Review

Sweet musical series celebrates school challenges and wins.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Kindergarten: The Musical is an animated TV series about the ups and downs of kindergarten. Each episode features multiple songs (sometimes performed by recurring characters/guest stars like Aloe Blacc and Leona Lewis) and one fantasy sequence in which the kids imagine they're…

Why Age 2+?

Any positive content.

Themes around helping one another, problem-solving, and excitement for learning.

Berti and friends are all very kind, friendly, and helpful. They help one anothe

Main character Berti is a Puerto Rican girl. The rest of the kindergarten classr

The show covers social-emotional skills, how to handle the challenges of kinderg

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Berti and friends are all very kind, friendly, and helpful. They help one another solve problems and cheer one another up when they're sad. When there's a misunderstanding or disagreement, they talk about it.

Diverse Representations

Main character Berti is a Puerto Rican girl. The rest of the kindergarten classroom is racially diverse, including Filipino, Jewish, Black, and White kids. While there are nods to each kid's cultural background (like the "family food" they bring to the food fair), they don't talk about their identities explicitly. Kindergarten teacher Ms. Moreno is Latina and fat. Boy and girl characters don't have overly stereotypically gendered interests.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Educational Value

The show covers social-emotional skills, how to handle the challenges of kindergarten, and what happens in a kindergarten classroom.

Parents need to know that Kindergarten: The Musical is an animated TV series about the ups and downs of kindergarten. Each episode features multiple songs (sometimes performed by recurring characters/guest stars like Aloe Blacc and Leona Lewis) and one fantasy sequence in which the kids imagine they're performing in a stage musical. Some characters show mild sadness or worry, but there's nothing that should upset young viewers (and no iffy content in general). It's a great pick for younger kids as they prepare for the first day of kindergarten.

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What's the Story?

In KINDERGARTEN: THE MUSICAL, 5-year-old Berti is excited for her very first day of kindergarten. When she arrives to Ms. Moreno's ( Gina Torres ) class, it's even more wonderful than she imagined! Until, that is, she can't remember to raise her hand, her special note from home is ruined, and she trips and falls. Luckily for Berti (Andrea Rosa Guzman), her class is full of new friends like Radish, Rose, Kenji, and Jamil to help her when she's having a tough time. Berti and friends sing about everything they're feeling, and Berti imagines they are performing in a big, Broadway-style musical together. The kids in Ms. Moreno's class navigate all the new parts of kindergarten together, both the fun and the not-so-fun.

Is It Any Good?

This animated show is a cute representation of a big milestone in kids' lives. Each Kindergarten: The Musical episode features a low-stakes problem and validates all the very big feelings kindergartners have as they're figuring out their new world. Teacher Ms. Moreno is a calming guide, but mostly the kids help one other figure out solutions on their own. The series features more musical numbers than most preschool shows, and the songs are often used to help the characters express their emotions. Grown-ups looking for an alternative to music-only shows like CoComelon may find that their kids enjoy this more substantive version.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the kids in Ms. Moreno's class worked together to overcome the problem in today's story.

If your child is in preschool or kindergarten, ask them if anything in the story reminds them of something that really happened while they were in school.

• Premiere date : September 3, 2024
• Cast : Gina Torres , Leona Lewis , Aloe Blacc , Andrea Rosa Guzman
• Networks : Disney Junior , Disney+
• Genre : Educational
• Topics : Friendship , Music and Sing-Along
• TV rating : TV-Y
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : September 5, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

Super Monsters: The New Class

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