The Notebook
(2004)
Dir. Nick Cassavetes
One of man’s greatest fears is the “chick-flick”. Men quiver at the thought of cupid spearing unsuspecting victims with his arrows for two hours of on-screen romance. This fear has become so potent, that women use chick-flicks as a device; they are a bartering tool. “If you watch that game you have to watch my movie,” or “You can have your time with the boys, because later you’re watching my movie with me.” What has happened is that men are being taken over by sappy love stories which are no longer entertaining for both sexes. Back in the day, with a film like Chaplin’s City Lights or Ernest Lubitsch’s The Shop Around The Corner every member of the audience would be laughing and rejoicing for the relationship. But now, we just have The Notebook. This film is the biggest phenomenon in chick-flicks since Pretty Woman, but it completely excludes a large portion of the audience. Anyone at any stage in life can watch a Chaplin love story, but for The Notebook, you have to be either female, or a husband of at least twenty successful years. Because the character that all single men will identify the most with gets the shit kicked out of him for the entire movie. It’s like watching The Passion of the Christ with Ryan Gosling taking the whips instead of JC. Rachel Adams plays Lucifer then, I guess. What would have made this film more accessible for both genders would be changing the Rachel Adams character. She shouldn’t have been as… should I say it?... realistic. I’ve met girls like her. I’ve dated them too, and the last thing I want to do is to be dragged to a movie by another one of these girls so that they can feed their brains with more ideas on how to make the males miserable. Damn that sounded bitter. I’ll let that cool down, and move on to other territory.
Gosling’s first appearance on film was in The Believer, which garnished him such praises as being compared to DeNiro in Taxi Driver. But in The Notebook he wasn’t even there. His physical presence appeared on screen but there was no heart. James Gardner and Gena Rowlands were the only ones who had believable performances. They also portrayed a more realistic situation: him taking care of her after she lost her entire memory of a forty-year marriage. You believe Gardner would stay with her because he had the good years to reflect upon, where as Gosiling only just met this chick and for some reason takes all her crap with an accepting smile. By now you’ve guessed that I didn’t like this film because I only relate to the abusive part in the relationship, but I do believe that the story is flawed and that if this wasn’t a Hollywood, Ryan would have removed his balls from that vice and left the picture within the first twenty minutes. Hollywood and Nicolas Sparks were made for each other.
