What’s the biggest obstruction to true love?

Amnesia, that’s what.

“The Vow”, directed by Michael Sucsy (“Grey Gardens”) and released Feb. 10, is a formulaic romance timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day festivities. In it, Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams), a happily married couple, experience a car crash that changes their lives. No one dies, sadly, but Paige does lose her memory. What a bummer. This sets the stage for a mediocre movie that is mildly entertaining, but doesn’t break any new ground.

We’ve sailed these amnesia filled waters before in such films as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Clean Slate” and “Winter Sleepers.” Heck, in “50 First Dates”, Drew Barrymore loses her memory every day. So yes, there’s nothing new here. That’s fine; you don’t go to a romance movie for trailblazing film-making, you go to a romance movie for, well, romance. And boy, is there romance. Before Paige loses her memory, she and Leo are a disgustingly perfect couple. They love each other so much that they make out at stop signs, an unfortunate habit, as it ultimately leads to them getting hit by a truck driver who probably saw what they were doing and sped up. Oh well, they learned their lesson.

While a car crash may seem like serious subject matter for a Valentine’s Day film, the gravity of the situation is balanced out by plentiful humor. In fact, the above average humor is one of the film’s redeeming characteristics. Although some of them would have fallen flat to the average sane person, they were enough to get a theater full of preteen girls roaring, or rather squealing, with laughter. One particularly memorable scene involved Leo and Paige going out for the first time after the accident. “First date and you’re already inviting yourself to stay the night?” Leo asks. “I don’t know, I’m just a little scandalized is all.”

Luckily, Sucsy took what could have been a gaudy romantic comedy with a little seriousness. The film starts with faux-artsy slow motion shots, contemplative narration by Leo and mopey music. While you could see the ending coming before the trailers even started, Sucsy pulled out all the stops to throw the audience along the way. Paige gives Leo awkward “Who the hell are you?” looks even though she knows they are married.  In fact, for most of the movie she acts like a word that starts with b and ends with itch, to the heartbroken man who loves her most.

“The Vow”, while not being an exercise in revolutionary film-making, is a fun movie nonetheless. For all its flaws, it should succeed in doing what it set out to do: help boys please their girls — if you know what I mean.