Good Guy Gets the Good Girl, Forever

Rating: 9/10 (6 October 2005)

THE NOTEBOOK is the film version of the mega tear-jerker romance novel of the same name by the best-selling author Nicholas Sparks. Nick Cassevetes (son of John C.) directed his mom and a fine cast including good'old James Garner for this truly romantic movie shot at incredibly beautiful locations in South Carolina.
Two kids (the handsome Ryan Gosling as NOAH and the radioactively attractive Rachel McAdams as ALLIE) from wrong ends of the social spectrum fall in love despite the vociferous objection of the girl's super rich family.
The girl leaves town for Sarah Lawrence College while the boy continues to work at a lumberyard. Then there is WW2. The boy goes to fight in Europe. His letters (365 letters in 365 days) are conveniently hidden from ALLIE by her manipulative and class-conscious mother. So ALLIE, giving up hope on NOAH, decides to marry the handsome son of the cotton king of south, a boy she meets as a wounded soldier when she volunteers as a nurse to help the ailing vets in hospital.
After coming back home, NOAH refuses to quit dreaming about ALLIE and builds the home he promised long time ago to her as their future home.
Just before the wedding, ALLIE sees the house and a bearded and older NOAH posing in front of it in her local paper -- and she just flat passes out in front of a dozen ooohing and aaaahing southern dames while trying out her spectacular wedding gown! Then she visits NOAH for a very hot encounter and after a few more twists (will she? won't she?), she decides to forgo the millions of the cotton king and live her life with the working class NOAH as his wife.
Now, this story is actually told by a much older NOAH in a nursing home to his wife ALLIE, the same kids just grown very old, in an attempt to cure ALLIE's dementia by reading her the NOTEBOOK she kept for all those years -- the very story of their love that is told in long flashbacks.
At the end, despite some lapses, she manages to regain her memory and the movie ends with a Mother of All Tear Jerkers final scene. If you don't cry during this movie, just forget it. You never will.
What a relief in this day and age of terrorism and business scandals and hurricanes and global warming to watch a story of pure mad love, holding over decades despite all odds, sticking around for ages and for a lifetime. It would be unbearable to watch this kind of a movie everyday. I still need my CHINATOWN, BLOOD SIMPLE by Coen Brothers, for example, or CRASH by Paul Haggis. But I'm also very glad that unabashedly romantic writers like Nicholas Sparks do exist. We are all fortunate that he is not selling pharmaceuticals for a living anymore. We are way richer for it.