Charming, if a little generic and naive romance flick

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2017)

The notebook is a charming romance movie that easily transports you back into the 40ies to tell its pretty implausible story of a woman torn between two men.
That being said, I do not understand Ryan Gosling's acting at all, especially not in a romance flick.
Like in the movie Drive, his character keeps the same constant look of detached, dreamy, slightly silly, perpetual slight amusement on his face all the time - whether he meets the love of his life, or his best friend dies - it doesn't seem to make any difference to him.
I simply don't understand whats the point of that. In a romance movie, the actors should try their best to convey believable emotions, not try to hide them at all cost? While in Drive, this sort of acting made some sort of sense within the generally weird framework of that movie, it just seems completely out of place in a romance movie, and is especially noticeable here because of its contrast to the lively, hearty performance of Heather Wahlquist as Sara.
In the end, this did not really completely ruin the movie for me, but I still found it distracting and detrimental to the overall charm of an otherwise above-average romance movie.
Still, the high rating on IMDb would have irritated me either way, but I guess the tear-jerking end served to push that up.
5/10