Release Date: June 25, 2004
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Marsden, Joan Allen, Sam Shepard
Directed by: Nick Cassavetes
Written by: Jeremy Leven
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (some sexuality)
It almost goes without saying that a romance based on a novel written by Nicholas Sparks will be too syrupy and overblown for anyone’s tastes, but people enjoy Sparks (either straight or with a self-aware twist) precisely because he lays it on thick. There’s certainly no denying, at any rate, that the man has made a nice ancillary career (see also: Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember) contracting this kind of stuff out to Hollywood, so, despite its pulpiness, The Notebook should find an audience willing to indulge in its fairy-tale malarkey.
It helps that the film, which is directed by Nick Cassavetes and scripted by Jeremy Leven, has a pair of engaging performances from its two leads, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. They play Allie Nelson and Noah Calhoun, a pair of South Carolina teenagers who fall in love during the summer of 1941 but are driven apart by upper-class Allie’s domineering parents, who believe that blue-collar Noah is no match for their daughter. McAdams, who played a rich girl and society queen in her previous movie, Mean Girls, knows how to do what is essentially the same character in The Notebook (Allie is just as prim, if slightly less sure of her sense of social entitlement, as Regina George was in Mean Girls). Gosling, opposite her, picks up on this, playing things fast and loose as the easygoing and confident Noah. The opposites-attract routine may be the oldest trick in the book, but with the right talent it still works, and Gosling and McAdams sell it to the audience in The Notebook.
Not long after Allie and Noah split up, World War II breaks out, and Noah enlists in the infantry while Allie joins up as a nurse. It is then that Allie -- still in love with Noah but believing him to have abandoned all thought of her -- falls in love with an officer (James Marsden) who is exactly the sort of Southern gentleman her parents expect her to eventually marry. Then Allie discovers that Noah is still alive and begins seeing him again, and realizes that she will eventually have to choose between him and her officer fiancé -- and her mother’s wishes.
This story is told, in its entirety, through flashback, as seen by an elderly couple (James Garner and Gena Rowlands) who naturally have more to do with the story than is originally let on. The love story between Allie and Noah is sentimental enough to qualify as typical Sparks, but the saying goes that when you have a Sparks story, you know someone will fall in love and you know someone will die -- which makes the old-timers prime targets. But: People enjoy Sparks because he lays it on thick, and the shameless speculation at which character will meet his or her romantically tragic end is part of the fun.
It is true that the present-day scenes with Garner and Rowlands add less to the story than they should. These bits interrupt the more engaging part of the story, the will-they/won’t-they soap opera between Allie and Noah, which will appeal to younger audiences because, despite its 1940’s setting, it plays out very much like a present-day network television soap. It is only obvious that Allie and Noah are living in the 40’s because they dress like characters from that time period, drive ridiculously huge automobiles, and make a point of feeling restricted by the archaic social structure that says a rich girl like her can’t fall in love with a guy from the wrong side of the tracks like him.
The Notebook is not a period romance developed for the period’s sake, but rather for modern audiences who want to indulge in a bit of nostalgic melodrama. Characterizations are broad and inarticulate, rescued only by a solid acting corps: Allie’s mother (Joan Allen), for instance, is wiry, refined, and mean-spirited; you can tell she is the movie’s villain just from the way she sits at the dinner table, straight-backed, poking at her food with tangible disdain for everything and everyone around her. Meanwhile, Noah’s father (Sam Shepard), is as easygoing as his son, implying that money corrupts and those without it are more apt to enjoy the subtle pleasures of life -- like a pancake breakfast at 10 o’clock at night, or the sound of Walt Whitman being read aloud. But there is an audience for these kinds of fairy-tale idiosyncrasies, however absurd, a niche that Sparks stories fill very well. People enjoy Sparks because he lays it on thick, and The Notebook is as thick as they come.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)