Didn't Love It or Hate It; Just Wish It Had Lived Up to Its Potential

Rating: 7/10 (13 September 2006)

"The Notebook" is one of those love it or hate it movies.
"The Notebook"'s champions insist it is one of the greatest love stories of all time. "The Notebook"'s detractors savage it as a manipulative, mawkish soap opera.
I didn't love it or hate it. I saw a lot of good in it, but it didn't really move me, and given how much it had going for it, I wish it had lived up to its potential. In fact I find it kind of sad that so many loved this mediocre movie so much. That just shows what a huge appetite there is for non-violent, family friendly movies that celebrate old fashioned values like committed love.
The best thing about the movie, for me, was Gena Rowlands' performance as an Alzheimer's sufferer. Gena Rowlands is one of those truly magical performers who bottle lightening, and firelight, in their performances. She is exciting and seductive.
I worked with Alzheimer's sufferers for years, and Rowlands' exacting and yet poignant performance took my breath away. I would have to guess that Rowlands' studied Alzheimer's sufferers and crafted her performance from meticulous and compassionate observations.
It was also great to see a movie that spent so much time with a female character, and actress, over forty.
James Garner's -- entirely unnecessary -- removal of his shirt was challenging to watch. I remember Garner from films like "The Americanization of Emily" where he was ripely sexy.
That was a long time ago, though, and Garner looks his age, and the movie doesn't spare us what time has done to him. His lips are blistered; his teeth have black spots; his body is spongey and thick.
But I came to be grateful for that. There's something to be said for a movie that doesn't shy from viewing an old man's body.
Garner is all the more impressive in that body. He still possesses and exercises the cocky command of his youth. In his love scenes with Rowlands, he gives his all, and his all is awesome to observe.
The sets, lighting, and costumes are all lush.
Ryan Gosling, who tears up in fifty percent of his scenes, is very sweet and dear, and Rachel MacAdams comes across as spunky.
For all that -- this movie never came together for me. It was just too much of a Hallmark card, of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Everyone, without exception, is nice; everything glows; nothing is too challenging and no one is too smart. In fact, it's all just a wee bit afraid of being too intelligent, too challenging.
The movie hearkens back to another era: the 1940s, in which much of the plot is set. Too, the tear-jerking, five handkerchief plot, with its unlikely twists, hearkens back to older unlikely tear jerkers like "Random Harvest." The thing is, though, those older films were not afraid of intelligence, or of the darker side of life. Yes, they were movies that an entire family could sit down and watch together, but they, often through subtle suggestion, evoked life's complexities. Even Frank Capra did this; suicide was a repeated theme in his most upbeat movies, including "It's a Wonderful Life." And Capra was not afraid of some very dark characterizations.
Ultimately, "The Notebook" fails its brilliant cast, and its audience, ravenously hungry, in this age of teen - boy - exploding - monster movies, for dialogue-, story-, and character-driven movies that celebrate women of all ages, and timeless virtues.
In spite of its failures, though, one could do worse than pop some corn and settle in for a couple of hours with "The Notebook."