The Notebook (2004)

Directed by Nick Cassavettes. Starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, James Marsden, Sam Shepard, David Thornton, Kevin Connolly, Jamie Brown, Heather Wahlquist. [PG-13]

An elderly man (Garner) visits a nursing home to tell a dementia patient (Rowlands) a love story set several decades ago between a working class kid (Gosling) from the wrong side of the tracks and a rich girl (McAdams) with pedigree. You know exactly where this is going within about four minutes—I know I’m not that clever—but it doesn’t matter when a movie comes along with one goal in mind (and it sure isn’t cerebral reflection or sleight-of-hand trickery). I was ready to give in, too, seeing as how the leads possess acting chops and are easy on the eyes, and they share palpable chemistry together…but even if I was able to overlook the movie’s sappy sentimentality, the script repeatedly forces complications into the mix that don’t belong; sure, “love” is almost never simple, but the road blocks here are manufactured against reason, with behavior and decisions consistently going against the grain of what we’ve learned about the motivations of both characters. Why do they keep doing the things they do to delay their happiness together, mirage or otherwise? Because the filmmakers have neither the wits nor the guts to spin the cliché-clogged yarn any other way. Based on a Nicholas Sparks bestseller—his first.

45/100