A miserable attempt to deliver a truly beautiful story

Rating: Null/10 (20 August 2004)

Many of those who've read it would undoubtedly agree that Nicholas Sparks's 1996 bestseller "The Notebook" could be deservingly called one of the most touching and beautiful romantic stories they've ever stumbled upon, a story filled with beauty, poetry, art, dreams, purity and strength of spirit. The 2004 movie on the other hand, is an entirely different story. Not venturing out too many details it can only be said that this must be the lousiest attempt at delivering an originally charming idea. The plot stands only in a very scarce correlation with the actual one and the relatively shallow main characters could not be more remote from the ones depicted in Sparks's story. Aside from a few beautiful sceneries the tone and spirit of this film are simply disgraceful to those of us who are better familiar with the story from an entirely different angle. In short, this cheap semi-comedy could not have less in common with the touching book on which it was based and it is a true disgrace for it to be called by the same name. It could never even stand in the same league with the beautiful cinematographic version of another excellent book of Sparks's Â– "Message in a bottle". One small piece of advice for everyone and especially those of you who have read the book - DON'T waste you time, money and nerves.