Touching and poignant, this movie has a heart

Rating: 8/10 (14 June 2004)

The Notebook is a chick flick. I just wanted to get that out of the way rather early in the review. So anyone who is thinking of seeing The Chronicles of Riddick and then sneaking in to see the Cassavetes new tear jerker, you should be told before hand that you are not the target audience for both films.
The Notebook is a surprising, emotional powerhouse of a film that had the theatre in tears in the simple telling of how two people met, fell in love and lasted until the end. Set in the 1940's, the story is about two young opposites as read from a notebook to an elderly woman who's memory is victim to Alzheimers. The film chronicles Allie Nelson (Rachel McAdams), a high-class, well-off teenage female who meets and soon falls in love for the wooing of Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling), a blue collar worker that makes forty cents an hour dragging and pulling bark off logs. The two young-ins couldn't be more opposite and couldn't be more in love. But love, as we learn can take time to reveal its destiny and the two are forced to deal with such obstacles and protective parents, war and eventually their biggest enemy, time. Sob.
I was not surprised to find that writer Nicholas Sparks has penned two other hanky flagging films in the past few years. A Walk To Remember and Message in a Bottle were both fluff, but fluff that can induce one to take a few extra swallows to get rid of the lump in your throat. The Notebook stays true to this course. The endings (I say it plural cause there was a fade away that could have been an ending only for one more tear jerking act to play out upon fade up), were heart tugging and had I had access to hammer, wood and nails, I would have started to build an Ark and get to of every animal on board quick for there was not a dry eye in the screening.

Like any movie that tries to evoke an emotional response from its audience, we have to buy into the characters and their situations and it is here that The Notebook rises above Spark's other writing efforts. Gosling and McAdams have true chemistry together and sparks fly from the time the two lie on the road to watch the street lights change color right to the ending that I can not bring myself to reveal in this review. Their affection for each other is so real that a simple glance by Noah or a dimpled smile by Allie can relay to the audience more than any written word could express.

Brilliantly shot by Director Nick Cassavetes with the help of memorable visuals by cinematographer Robert Fraisse, the film takes us to a time of enchantment where hundreds of ducks can accompany a romantic boat ride or where a reading on the dock at sunset can fill one with nostalgia.

This was Cassavetes next film after the misguided John Q with Denzel Washington in 2001, and like Q, Cassavetes throws a lot against the wall in this film in hopes that most of it sticks. We are given scenes of war in Europe, an engagement, the re-building of a house, the death of a father and the revealing of secrets by a parent. All this kind of makes you feel as if you were standing in front of a Schwarzenegger machine gun getting hit with just about every possible scenario or experience that two people could ever encounter. But thanks to the great acting and the shifting from the young teenage characters to their elder selves, it allows us breaks every once and while to catch our breathes and savor the love that these two had for each other.
I couldn't help but think at the conclusion of the film that if this were a movie set in present day with a Jennifer Lopez type character in the lead female role, how awfully contrived and manipulating this movie would be viewed and I suppose this is the same realization the studio had to release the film amongst the summer blockbusters.
For all its small shortcomings, The Notebook is a refreshing bit of air in a summer of Ogres and talking cats. James Garner gives a touching performance as the elder man who reads the notebook to Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes mother in the factual world), and when his heart is broken at a relapse of her memory, we cry alongside his anguish.
So I have to give a strong recommendation to The Notebook with just one word of advice. That is to take lots of tissue or at the very least, buy a big bag of popcorn to hide your face from your date so she doesn't see you have a soft side.
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