‘The Age of Adaline’ is ‘fleeting and inconsequential’

This morning we all woke up a little bit older than yesterday. The star of “The Age of Adaline” doesn’t have that problem.

“The Age of Adaline” might make you swoon. Then again it might make you double over in laughter. It’s that kind of movie.

Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button, Adaline is dealing with some quirky physiology. But unlike those literary precedents, “The Age of Adaline” doesn’t attempt any grand metaphoric statement about life. It instead has a very narrow focus on how Adaline’s secret affects her love life.

The result is disappointingly shallow. Like Adaline herself, this movie is pretty, but not much else.

Speaking of pretty, actress Blake Lively, as Adaline, couldn’t look any prettier. If you’re going to get stuck being the same age for the rest of eternity, I suppose looking like a 27-year-old Blake Lively isn’t the worst of fates. And the movie takes full advantage of those looks by dressing her in a series of stunning outfits from the various decades she lives through.

Born in 1908 and miraculously brought to a kind of eternal life in 1935, Adaline has managed to navigate her way through the rest of the 20th century and onto present day, all the time as an eternally fresh 27-year-old. She’s like a vampire who never has to go out for blood.

Imagine all the rich possibilities this kind of fable offers. What would it be like to be a young adult in the ’30s and then in the ’40s, and the ’50s, the ’60s, and the ’70s, etc? What happens to your sense of self when the times are so radically different? Do you change your sense of right and wrong as the mores of society change around you, for instance? Is there a grand disconnect between how you look (like a 20-something) and how you feel (like a worldly wise or world-weary 60 or 70-year-old)? Would all your 20-something friends seem incredibly immature when you realize in reality you’re older than their parents and their grandparents? And just how bizarre would life be like for Adaline who’s over 100 when the movie starts, and yet she still has the energy &#8212 sexually and otherwise &#8212 of a 27-year-old!

Instead of exploring any of the profound sociological and psychological ramifications of her one-of-a-kind life, the movie limits itself to the more pedestrian issues of whether she should tell a rich, handsome new suitor about her secret past. It seems that the movie devolves from a unique and challenging premise to a Nicholas Sparks’ cliche.

Why, after 80 years, she should all of a sudden consider spilling the beans to this particular guy is never explained.

And then things get even more complicated when she quite unexpectedly runs into someone from her past, which is not all that surprising, I suppose, given how long that past of hers is.

It’s at this point that the movie either takes off into high romance or plunges into eye-rolling lunacy. No spoilers here but If you’re susceptible to “romance,” and you know who you are, “The Age of Adaline” will be a sweetly polished and well-acted love story for the ages, literally.

For the rest of us, as one character says about his relationship with Adaline, this movie is “fleeting and inconsequential.” And who knows, you might get a good laugh or two out of it as well.