Beautiful cinematography and high-class actors, but something amiss.

Rating: 7/10 (12 August 2009)

Perhaps I wasn't quite in the right mood for this film when I watched it. It was a film I had highly anticipated,and I wanted to love it. Don't get me wrong, I did like it. It is an enjoyable and touching simple romance, moving through the ages,depicting a generation of love. I wanted to be swept away in the sheer romance. But coming away from it, I found myself thinking it hadn't quite lived up to it's immense hype.
The film starts one fateful summer in the 1940s, and the young couple meet at a carnival. This is probably one of my favourite scenes in the film; unrealistic, but we know the film isn't trying to be realist – it's romantic, and that's the important thing.
Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling steal the show, conveying the emotions of young love superbly; the first steps as they get to know each other; followed by the passion as the couple can never seem to agree on anything, but their love for each other.
McAdams is especially outstanding in this feature, and I didn't even recognise her from her part in Mean Girls, released earlier that year. She has proved herself as a talented, flexible actress and after seeing her in this I can't wait to see what she does with the part of Claire in movie The Time Travellers Wife, coming out this year, which is based on one of my favourite books of all time.
Alongside the story of the young lovers, we have the parallel story of an older couple (James Garner and Gena Rowlands). Both also play their roles well, but it's all a little predictable. Did anyone not see a million miles ahead that they would be the elderly Noah and Allie?
This film does have some genuinely touching scenes; watch out for when the children visit Duke and Alison in the residential home – this one had me welling up; "That's my sweetheart in there. Wherever she is, that's where my home is."
We also get a glimpse at what it would be like to lose a loved one to an illness like senile dementia; the painful circumstance where someone you've known your whole life can't even remember who you are.
All in all, The Notebook is a pleasant way to spend two hours; with an overwhelmingly romantic and sentimental core, but coming away from it, for me it's not as memorable as other films in the romance genre. We follow Noah and Allie as they grow up; falling in love young; living separate lives before being reunited again. It tells a story we've heard and seen a hundred times before, but it does tell it well.