The Notebook (2004)
Directed by Nick Cassavetes
An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to a woman with Alzheimer's. From a faded notebook, the old man's words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths.
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18 films that influenced The Notebook
What critics say influenced The Notebook
Sparks has commented that he would never write a love story about adultery, like Robert James Waller’s The Bridges of Madison County, adultery being in his words “anathema to me.” Apparently, fornication isn’t in the same class.
In the past decade or so, Hollywood has given us precious few, with ones like "The Painted Veil," "Atonement," and "The Bridges of Madison County" among my own personal favorites.
This type of framework has been a stumbling block for solid Hollywood entertainment before, recently in Saving Private Ryan (the clunky narrative of the Normandy visit) and The Bridges of Madison County (the reading of notes and letters).
McAdams ("Mean Girls") displays a passion that rivals Natalie Wood's gut-wrenching constancy in "Splendor in the Grass."
Half of "The Notebook" is a silly, syrupy romance about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose powerful attraction is threatened by such reliable obstacles class differences, mean old parents who just don?t understand and a world war-basically the kind of story that was already beginning to seem shopworn and cliched back in the days of "A Summer Place" and "Splendor in the Grass".
His father was the late John Cassavetes, who for years financed his own deeply personal and naturalistic films (Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, Gloria), often co-starring wife Rowlands.
As adapted by Jan Sardi and Jeremy Leven and directed by Nick Cassavetes, Rowlands's son, "The Notebook" is two movies, one dubiously hitched to the other, like "On Golden Pond" stuffed inside some young-adult romance.
Call it mature love, if that doesn't conjure images from On Golden Pond or Harold and Maude.
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…claims that nine famous actresses and one Rachel McAdams auditioned for the part of Allie, but it's McAdams' audition tape--excerpted within but included in full as a separate viewing option--that is the real revelation: once her anachronistic fidgeting settles down, she knocks your socks off in a manner reminiscent of Naomi Watts' performance-within-a-performance in Mulholland Drive .
Half of "The Notebook" is a silly, syrupy romance about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose powerful attraction is threatened by such reliable obstacles class differences, mean old parents who just don?t understand and a world war-basically the kind of story that was already beginning to seem shopworn and cliched back in the days of "A Summer Place" and "Splendor in the Grass".
Allie's parents are evil southern plantation crackers who own Gone with the Wind-era slaves; Noah works in a gravel pit with his best friend Barney Rubble.
The flaw in the movie may be the casting of Gosling, who is a good-enough actor ("The United States of Leland," "The Believer") but just doesn't have the kind of star power or chemistry with McAdams to anchor this kind of minor-league "Gone With the Wind."
Take the deleted scenes section, during which optional commentator Alan Heim (who won a well-deserved Oscar for cutting All That Jazz) provides at once a master class in the editing process, roadmaps to uncensored nip-slips and plumber's crack from Rachel McAdams, and the most honest criticism(s) of the material in the entire package.
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Call it mature love, if that doesn't conjure images from On Golden Pond or Harold and Maude.
Unlike Judi Dench's disheveled appearance in "Iris," Gena Rowlands, as an Alzheimer's sufferer, is perfectly coifed and made up and, except for a blankness around her eyes, could be headed for a tea party.