Notebook, The
It’s quite hard to knock this film. I’m usually so against the romance genre for all their cheaply manipulative ways and adherence to such eye-rolling clichés but The Notebook carries itself in such a way that leaves it seemingly impenetrable to criticism – after all these types of films are all about playing the audience using all the usual tricks, but the real trick is in sucking people into a story they have already heard a thousand times. In this, The Notebook succeeds and indeed should be considered well at the forefront of its sloppy peers.
Sure it is a sappy weepy romance, but one done well and played so straight. Like A Walk to Remember (another Nicholas Sparks adaptation) it wisely lets the melodrama of the situation roll on effortlessly and unashamedly embraces it at all the right times.
If the film pushes too hard it’s with the old people. The story we are watching is being read by an old chap to an Alzheimer’s affected lady in a retirement villa, trying to re-jig her memory of what obviously was their story. This stuff is played out very heavily, and personally I thought it detracted from the simple story instead of adding another level to it. Also the old people weren’t nearly as pretty as their younger selves.
The two leads are well chosen and bring more than just puppy-love eyes to the proceedings. McAdams is undeniably gorgeous and impossible not to fall in love with while Gosling is a mystery of broody masculinity that will no doubt make the ladies crack a moisty (sorry, I just couldn’t bring myself to say the word ‘swoon’).
The Notebook knows its appeal lies in the use of small-town charm, the warm and hazy memories of a perfect summer romance, and the usual class-warfare of period romances, and exploits these sentiments delightfully. A rich girl and a poor-but-rich-in-spirit ruggedly handsome man from the bad side of town fall passionately in love – they’re from different worlds – they can’t be together…can they? Yes they can. And you knew that. But that’s not the point. It’s all in the telling…