The Notebook (2004)

So a  couple of months ago, I was at my church's adult group, when my friends Lindsay and Margaret started talking about The Notebook. They were making it abundantly clear how much they hate the movie and how millions of other women go crazy over it. As they were telling me all of this, I started thinking: "you know what? I've heard about this movie many times but haven't seen it for myself." So I decided to watch the movie and give my two cents, which they both supported. Well I kind of took longer than I planned to get to it (sorry about that guys), but I have just recently watched it, so here is the long delayed review for The Notebook.

Plot: The film centers around a local country boy named Noah and a rich girl named Allie who fall in love when Allie's family are visiting Noah's town over the summer. But when Allie's parents find out, her mother forbids her from seeing him again because he's poor. This leads to the two of them getting separated from each other for several years, during which, Allie gets engaged to a wealthy man. But when she learns about him finally building his dream job in the newspaper, she comes back and they take another chance at their love, leaving for Allie to figure out what to do about her engagement.

Now based on how Lindsay and Margaret attacked the movie, it sounded like I was going to really hate this movie. And even if neither of them talked about it, other people have gone on and on how it's this big chick flick that girlfriends/wives drag their boyfriends/husbands to watch. As for me, I'm siding with Lindsay and Margaret that it's bad. But at the same time it's a little better than I thought it would be, but not by much. It doesn't really bring a lot of new things as a chick flick. A lot of that centers around how generic the characters and the story are. I mean come on, just from reading the plot paragraph to this review, how could you not feel like you've heard this story before? The boy is poor but he has a free spirit, the girl is rich and she becomes more active like the boy, it isn't too long before they eventually decide to have sex (or sort of try to in this case), the girls parent(s) disapproves of their realtionship and wants her to marry a rich guy, at some point they kiss in the rain, on and on and on. And of coarse, women view this movie as how love is suppose to be, and they wish their boyfriends/husbands are more like Ryan Gosling. If you enjoy seeing this in so many chick flicks, more power to you. But for the rest of us, we have seen this dozens of times in other chick flicks or just romance in general, and we can't really look past all these cliches. True, some things are done a little differently, such as how again, they don't end up having sex early on and the rich fiancee is actually a really nice guy, but in the long run, it's completely the same thing. If there's anything that is particularly good about this movie, it would be the performances and the ending. While the characters are generic, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams do give it their all in their acting, and they do show a good amount of chemistry... at least when they are not constantly fighting. Seriously, it's surprising how much they bicker and sometimes even hit reach other during this movie. I think they were trying to make their relationship more like real life relationships which is a good intention, but it doesn't always work they way they're displaying it. And the very end of the movie is very touching. I wouldn't call it a real tear dropper, at least for me personally, but it does have a very nice heart to it.

And that's my review for The Notebook. It has some good performances and a touching ending, but aside from that, it's just another chick flick with many of the melodramatic cliches that go with it. If you like movies with this kind of story, you'll get your fill here. Otherwise, I would take it from me, Margaret and Lindsay and skip this movie.

Rating: 50%