Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Notebook - 2004

I'm a big fan of a good love story. I've heard gobs of praise for this movie, the Notebook. People talked about crying and crying. We settled in with anticipation to watch a nice romantic movie on Valentines day. Holy cats, what a stinker!
(Spoilers follow.) The story flips back and forth in time between an older couple and a younger one. The older couple features James Garner, who is virtually the only bright spot in the movie. The young couple is Ryan Gosling (moonface) and Rachael McAdams (the B from 'Meangirls'). Frankly, they're terrible. Neither one acts like they know that their part of the movie takes place in the 40's. At no point did we care about their characters.
Maybe even worse than the bad acting was the poor movie design. Every plot surprise is telegraphed well before it arrives. Once it arrives, they find a way to reinforce what happened in case the slowest member of the audience somehow missed it. At the end we felt not only disappointed but also insulted.
As I said, I'm a big fan of a good love story. It's a shame that this didn't qualify.

1 comment:

MamaD4 said...

Yeah, I know WAY too many people who consider this movie/book their "absolute favorite".

I mean, the basic idea of the story is nice, the woman with Alzheimer's and the husband retelling their tale. That part is a good concept, but you're right, the movie is completely sappy.