Good Enough To Rise Above Melodrama

Rating: 10/10 (28 September 2012)

The Notebook is a romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, based on the romance novel of the same title by Nicholas Sparks. It stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall in love during the early 1940's. Their story is narrated from the present day by an elderly man played by James Garner, telling the tale to a fellow nursing home resident, played by Gena Rowlands.
The film's story revolves around Noah Calhoun's regular visits to a female patron of an area nursing home. Rather than bore her with the inanities of everyday life, Calhoun reads from an old, faded notebook containing the sweeping account of a young couple whose love affair was tragically put to a halt after their separation in the midst of World War II. Seven years later, the couple was reunited, and, despite having taken radically different paths, they found themselves unable to resist the call of a second chance.
Bland and sentimental, the movie is old-fashioned filmmaking aimed at an old-fashioned viewers.But nevertheless,It's hard not to admire its unabashed sentimentality.It is definitely too clumsily manipulative put tears into the viewer and good enough to rise above its melodramatic clichés.