The Notebook (2004)

The Notebook, based off of the novel of the same name by Nicolas Sparks, was released in 2004. As soon as I was old enough to truly understand movies, it immediately popped up on my radar. And I avoided it for eight years. I ran from this movie like it was the Black Plague. And now, due to the fact that with Drive and Crazy Stupid Love. my hero for 2011 has become Sir Ryan Gosling, I buckled down and watched the movie that made him and the wonderful Rachel McAdams unbearable famous.

Nicolas Sparks, the mastermind behind such evil plots as The Last Song, became famous with this little book, published eight years prior to the movie. He seems to be one of the more famous money-makers behind the relentless pulp novel section, that one very much has to weed through (consisting of romance, supernatural romance, and pointless thriller) to find a decent book (for me today it was A Game of Thrones-I’m very excited). But here, this story follows a modern day elderly man (James Garner) who is reading the story of a notebook to one of his fellow female patients (Gena Rowlands), who is suffering from dementia, to whom the story has a special meaning. The story goes back to the 1940s where a man named Noah (Ryan Gosling) meets and falls in love with a girl named Allie (Rachel McAdams), and the rest of the film chronicles their love, as they fight, recoup, live, love, and do all of this against the class system which is doing its best to pull the poor boy away from the rich girl. With a very classy supporting role by the wonderful James Marsden, the movie, even with its flaws (and God only knows there are many of them), becomes a very nice and enjoyable romance film, one that shows that love does actually conquer a good bit.

The film does have some very cheesy dialogue, there are a good bit of scenes that make you want to slam your head against a door, and that is my main complaint for the film, but the film is shot beautifully, the two leads have wonderful chemistry with one another, and the film retains an underlying sweetness that is essential to every single romantic movie’s success. And that lack of sweetness is something I see far too often in both romantic comedies and dramas, so it’s good to see a movie that just wants to tell a story about a boy and about a girl.
7/10