There’s an interesting premise buried somewhere beneath the rubble of the ramshackle story in The Age of Adaline, a film that tries very hard to be a powerful love story but ends up being a ridiculously contrived message film about, well, let’s see…about why it’s valuable to age?

There are so many better ways to tell a story about the beauty of growing old with the ones we love than wrapping it in a gimmicky ruse  explained away in a lengthy voiceover that goes into lightning strikes, DNA, freezing water, heart rate, and some mumbo jumbo junk science that won’t be invented until the year 2030.

But that’s exactly what happens when Adaline Bowman (Blake Lively) drives her car off the road and into a lake before dying sometime in the 1930s. We can almost hear the voiceover talent holding back the giggles as he goes into a lengthy description of how a lightning strike (how much bad luck can a person have in a 5-minute span?) somehow interacts with Adaline’s DNA and puts her in a state of eternal youth at the age of 29. It’s as if the filmmakers had the makings of a wonderful story about eternal youth, love, and the beauty of growing old, but didn’t know how to couch it in a believable concept. So they came up with The Age of Adaline.

We next meet Adaline in modern day as she buys a new identity while preparing to cut all ties, move away, and find another job. That’s what she does every decade or so to keep others from finding out about her affliction. Or, is it really an affliction? And why would she want to hide it? For it all to work, and for us to buy into her story, we must understand her problem. The gravity of her hardship of being eternally youthful and the dangers of someone finding out about it are never really realized, so we don’t have an emotional investment in her dilemma. Everything falls flat.

Via a series artfully handled flashbacks, we see many of Adaline’s past romantic relationships wilt on the vine because of her reluctance to let them fully develop. She’s afraid of getting close to anyone -- other than her own daughter (Ellen Burstyn) who is now 60 years her senior -- for fear of them discovering her secret.

The Age of Adaline, a beautiful film to look at, is constructed quite brilliantly by director Lee Toland Krieger, who made a Hollywood splash with The Vicious Kind back in 2009. He does flashbacks better than most and lends a pleasant, painterly quality to almost every scene here.

The cast does an admirable job with the thin content written by J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz, but Lively’s one-note performance is decidedly the weakest of the bunch. Sadly, she pales when sharing the screen opposite Burstyn, but then again, most do. However, the film comes to life when Harrison Ford enters the picture late as the object of a “twist” when Adaline (who now goes by a different name) visits the home of her new beau’s parents.

It’s a great role for Lively because of the way she knocks us dead in her glamorous wardrobes that reflect whichever period the flashbacks plunk us down into. Yet her mood and demeanor never register above peculiarly distant. She’s always on the verge of crying and never has much to say. Sure, we understand that her character depiction calls for melancholy – but only if you buy into the remote idea that she shouldn’t allow herself to get close to anyone.

(Released by Lionsgate and rated “PG-13” for a suggestive content.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.