Overly drawn out mushy love story gives us a decent ending (but it's not worth it)

Rating: 5/10 (1 June 2014)

I'm not sure what this movie was trying to do.
Let's start with the length; it's far too long at over two hours. For about 100 of those 120 minutes, however, I was thinking of coming on here and absolutely trashing it. It employs every stereotype, every romantic cliché, every predictable situation and outcome, and every setup and resolution you've seen a million times before. And yet the last fifteen minutes is actually a fairly satisfying conclusion. I don't think it's quite strong enough to save the movie - you have to go through far too much of Ryan Gosling infuriatingly mumbling for that to be the case, but in honesty it was the only highlight of the picture for me.
That said I don't want to criticise the actors too much. I think Gosling and Rachel McAdams do a fairly good job of what is a trite script - McAdams is best in brat mode (a la Mean Girls) in the first half hour or so of the movie - and while Gosling's acting range seems to go from being mildly amused to gormlessly distracted, it's only because he's written as such a dull goofball. About 5 minutes in I was sure that after an hour of this film I'd get sick of the Southern accents, but in fairness, they pull them off pretty well - admittedly this may have been because I was so distracted by the other problems (or, maybe, caught up in the romance....haha) but they proved me wrong on that count at least.
As I said, this movie seems to struggle with its own identity - at times I wanted to laugh, especially in the scenes where McAdams' character is brutally attacking Gosling's (they fight, it's what they do, apparently) but I was fairly sure they weren't going for the Rom-Com angle, and it didn't appear to be intentionally funny. So it was supposed to be a drama? Well, the climax aside (which, as I said, did pull at the heartstrings a little) I really could not get involved in these people enough to feel anything. Not at the famous kiss in the rain, nor at the dramatic reunion at the end.
Again, I think this is down to the writing and direction - the actors are doing the best with what they have - but there was potential here. Without giving too much away, the action cuts back and forth between modern day and the 1940s, and again it's derivative, but that's not a problem as long as its done well. But it's not. The pacing is agonisingly slow. It doesn't help also that there is absolutely no subtlety to it - yes, that's fine if it's another Romantic drama, it's expected, just do it well, but they were clearly trying to do something a bit different, and it just doesn't work when everything is spelled out to you and treats the audience like children.
So it's a 5, and it would have been a 3 but for the efforts of the actors and that last fifteen minutes. Now I know a lot of people like this movie, and if you're really into romantic dramas you'll probably get something out of it, but for me, there are just too many problems to allow a good ending to let this movie off.