In a society obsessed with youth and vanity, love story The Age of Adaline slows down time, transports the viewer through decades of American history, and captures the beauty of aging, all while exposing the dark side of eternity.

Topping Furious 7 in the box office opening weekend, The Age of Adaline opened with $13.3 million on Friday April 24^th, and played in 2,991 locations nationwide. I was one of the thousands who made my way to the theater last weekend, eager to see my favorite former Gossip Girl star, Blake Lively, play the lead role.

The movie starts out with a narrated timeline of Adaline’s at-first glamorous life in San Francisco sometime during the roaring 20’s. It was along the coast of the construction site of the Golden Gate Bridge where she meets her engineer husband, who later dies in a work related accident. Driving home from the funeral, distracted by her emotions, and unable to see through the magical, but mysterious, California snow fall, Adeline swerves off the road ultimately drowning in a frigid body of water. Another magical bolt of lightning strikes her sinking car and defibrillates her back to life, somehow altering the genes in her body to stop the aging process. Don’t laugh; if you get past the scientific mumbo jumbo, the rest of the film is believable.

Over the decades, Adaline must avoid anyone wishing to take her photo and change her identity with the use of fake IDs and passports to escape from the Feds who might want to subject her to experimentation. All the while she watches everybody age around her.

By 2015, her daughter Fleming, played by Ellen Burstyn, becomes the only living family member in Adeline’s life. Burstyn portrays an 80 year old daughter to Lively and the only voice of reason in her character’s life– telling her to “stop running” and to enjoy life in the present. While the viewer may be confused by this at first, Adeline’s previous love stories from decades past are sprinkled throughout the rest of the movie, showing her heartbreak from having to leave her lovers due to her life in the shadows.

While the first half of the movie seemed to drag on, showing Adeline going through the motions of her less-than-exciting librarian life, handsome millionaire Ellis, played by Michiel Huisman, soon comes into play and is baffled by Adaline’s hard-to-get personality. Before you know it, she is meeting his parents at their cottage nestled in the woods in northern California for a 40 year anniversary party.

Things start to get exciting (and awkward) when Adaline walks through the doors of Ellis’s parents’ home and realizes she has had a past love with his father, William, played by Harrison Ford. William, too, realizes her familiarity but believes it is impossible to be the same person he fell in love with 40 years ago, since she appears 30 years younger than him. You have to see the movie to find out what happens with their historic family love triangle, and how Adaline is to spend the rest of her immortal life.

Overall, the movie is great for a date night or if you’re in the mood for  romance…not so great if you’re looking to be enriched with American history. Adaline lives through two world wars, shuttle launches, segregation, sexual revolutions and feminist movements of the 70’s, decades of pop culture, and appears to show little wisdom or experience that a realistic elderly woman would have in her lifetime. The way that Adaline and Ellis’s love for each other quickly and so effortlessly grows, will soon make the tale a favorite, one to be placed among Nicholas Sparks’s  love-at-first-sight classics, once it reaches the masses. As long as you get past the unrealistic perfectness of her life (how does she afford her mansion-sized closet full of elegant ballroom gowns on a librarian paycheck!?) you will be swept of your feet with this timeless sci-fi fairytale. 10/10 for the beautiful sepia-toned cinematography and intricate costumes that  any former Gossip Girl fan would appreciate.. 7/10 for a somewhat undeveloped plot and humdrum character personalities.

The Age of Adaline is a story of love lost, found, and redefined. Her character’s roller coaster of romance and hardships remind us all of the beauty of growing old with loved ones. This movie will make you laugh, cry, and leave the theater with a newfound meaning of commitment.