The Notebook (2004)

Directed by: Nick Cassavetes

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Marsden

Since this is now on Netflix it's a good time to review it, but I actually watched this on a plane ride about a year ago with my little sister. It's all right. 

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This films gets a lot of low-level trash talked about it by guys like me, but it's honestly not that bad. A lot of the things you trash-talk about aren't when you examine them properly. I think it gets mockery because it's about girls' idea of romance, and boys have a vested interest in keeping that manageable lol. 

I heard a lot about this before seeing it, so trash-talk aside, I thought it wouldn't even live up to its hype. But it did! It's really got the bones of a good story, and most of the complaints made about it aren't really relevant. 

Premise - one summer in 1940's South Carolina, a young boy named Noah meets a well-to-do girl named Allie, and the two begin a steady romance. Sadly, her parents think he's below her social station, and the two have an abrupt separation that keeps them from properly staying together. What follows is a quiet tale of sadness, desperation, and romance, as the two pine for each other across the miles and try to get back together again. 

The '40's setting makes it very attractive, 'cause it's close enough to the present that all the "going out" stuff is the same, but the World War II threat and so on make it very romantic, in the "unrealistically sweet-seeming" meaning of the word. It's worth keeping in mind, for example, that if Noah's character was black, they'd have a whole 'nother set of problems. But Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams give two great performances, and the plot legit does have enough interesting commentary about class division and marriage (for white people) that it actually makes a point. Instead of a "Romeo and Juliet" message about dying for your lover - which I think is quite easy to judge this stuff as being - it really feels like a story about having chemistry and a special connection with someone, and how valuable that connection can be. 

I'm not gonna say it's perfect. If you're Mormon or whatever, I wouldn't recommend it for Young Women's Movie Night, 'cause it's got some contradictory messages about the law of chastity. But if you're a person looking for a movie to watch with your coed friend/significant other, this isn't a terrible option.