Genre: Romance, Drama, Love, Teenage, Period Piece, Love Triangle, World War II
Tagline: Behind every great love is a great story.
Plot: As a man (Garner) reads from a faded notebook to the woman (Rowlands) he regularly visits, his words bring to life the story of a couple (Gosling and McAdams) who are separated by class differences and World War II, then passionately reunited 7 years later, after they have taken different paths. Though her memory has faded, his words give her the chance to relive her turbulent youth and the unforgettable love they shared.A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940’s to spend the summer with her family. Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a Carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love. Circumstances – and the sudden outbreak of World War II – drive them apart, but both continue to be haunted by memories of each other. When Noah returns home from the war years later, Allie is irrevocably gone from his life, but not from his heart. Though Noah doesn’t yet know it, Allie has come back to Seabrook, where they first fell in love. But now Allie is engaged to marry Lon (James Marsden), a wealthy soldier
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 Fans of sudsy romances will adore The Notebook, but the film fails to manipulate the intellect with the same effectiveness that it tweaks the emotions.  --James Berardinelli (ReelViews)
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are swell, but Nick Cassavetes' paean to 1940s small-town America is just a load of hooey.--Charles Taylor (Salon)
A nice, relieving break from the traditional cutesy experiences that these movies usually provide. B--Lee Tistaert (Lee's Movie Info)
'The Notebook' is a nice bit of summer counter-programming, a relaxing romance when you don't feel like watching aliens, tornadoes or robots and a zillion special effects.  --Harrison Cheung (Movie-Gurus.com)
The Notebook is not a film for the hardened, the realist, or the strong of mind. But for those who want to tiptoe in and remember what it was like to think it might all just be a fairytale after all, it's worth a matinee.--Shari L. Rosenblum (CineScene)
By hinging on the dynamic of the flashback, rather than its action and meaning, the past loses some of its heartache and sting, and the film feels like nothing but a means to an end.  --Norm Schrager (FilmCritic.com)
The girls will dry their eyes, while the guys will roll theirs. The acting and directing are well-done, but it's an incredibly predictable, unoriginal and dull yarn that should've stayed on the page rather than on the screen. --Brian Gallagher (MovieWeb)
...it’s a true romance, taking audiences on a journey, showcasing only the sheer beauty of love. Even if it may be kind of sappy, it will be hard for even the toughest of guys to deny that it’s a good film.  --Danny Baldwin (BucketReviews.com)
Old-fashioned matinee pictures don't come much more sickly than The Notebook, a cloying weepie in which senile dementia meets Mills and Boon. --Jamie Russell (BBC Films)
Angst has been substituted for drama, and while it's a sweet movie, it's also drearily uninspired. I suspect the couples who would enjoy it thoroughly would equally enjoy sitting at home and gazing into each other's eyes for two hours. C+--Eric D. Snider (EricDSnider.com)
Despite the pleasant surprise that it isn’t completely rancid, The Notebook proves ultimately and unfortunately completely forgettable. 65/100--Dan Jardine (Apollo Guide)
So even though most romantic films are somewhat subjective at their core, I really enjoyed this one on its sappy, lovey-dovey level and I'm not afraid to admit it 7/10--'JoBlo' (JoBlo.com)
Despite the occasional flaw, The Notebook is a well acted, beautifully photographed 1940s romance – the ideal chick-flick antidote to the ‘Summer of Sport’. --Matthew Turner (ViewLondon)
Unapologetic romantic schmaltz (it's Lifetime meets the Hallmark Hall of Fame), "The Notebook" is well worth the risk of diabetic shock for the sake of superb acting that transcends its teary milieu.--Lou Lumenick (New York Post)
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| Written by |
| Jan Sardi
Shine, Mao's Last Dancer, Love's Brother |
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| 'The Notebook' is, without a shadow of a doubt, mushier than a mushed-up bowl of mushy peas that's just been mushed in an industrial-strength mushifier. At no other time in my life can I recall seeing any movie where the film-makers make it so unashamedly obvious that their one and only aim is to make everyone in the audience cry. 4/10 --Gary Panton (Movie Gazette)
The Notebook” is a traditional southern-fried romantic opus, almost guaranteed to have the audience in tears when the end credits roll. B--Brian Orndorf (FilmJerk.com)
"The Notebook" is so simple and yet so honest about love that I couldn't help but get swept up in the whole melodrama of it all.  --Jason Whyte (eFilmCritic.com)
...two hours of the worst sort of sentimental sap.--Jack Mathews (New York Daily News)
The Notebook succeeds at being one of the few romances of the past few years worthy of the title “tearjerker”—not because it desperately strains to earn the audience’s sympathy but because it actually leaves them wallowing in tears when the end credits begin rolling. --John Sylva (The Movie Insider)
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