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 Chris' Review: BEST COMEDY EVER! Ok, now I have to explain this. The Notebook is one of those sappy romance movies. Not entirely without merit, but for the most part it uses cheap devices to pull at your heart-strings. It wants you to cry. It wants to fill you with this fairy-tale love and make you cry at the end. Passable dramatic acting. Well written even if it was unoriginal. From the opening credits where you hear a gentle piano and see a man in a rowboat pulling through a flock of geese during a sunrise, it was a tacky effort to get you to buy more Kleenex®. Unfortunately, this week, I can't get a very thorough review on what the movie was really like because my suspension of disbelief never fully engaged. This was not necessarily the movie's fault. The culprits for my lack of attention are the same that made this one of my favorite movie experiences of all time. Sitting between Jim and Ella, the two funniest people I know. Every 20 seconds I had a comment thrown into my ear from one side or the other. I was laughing so hard that this morning my stomach still hurts. From the opening credits to 20 minutes after we left the theatre I did not stop laughing. Even after that it was a lot of grins remembering. From Jim making Hitchcock references due to certain scenes where the lovers were surrounded by birds, to Ella shouting an exasperated "Uh...Yeah!?!" at the screen when the female lead asked her mother if she thought her tarty actions made her a tramp. I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. Yes, I cried during a sappy love story. The thing is, I cried for all the wrong reasons. In the end, I give this movie 4 thumbs down as a straight flick. It might have been better or worse. I'm actually giving it the benefit of the doubt because, as I mentioned, I was a bit distracted. Still, I don't recommend it. On the other hand, if you have the rare opportunity to sit between these two wonderful people at any point in the future and watch this movie. I don't care if you have to pay for the privilege... it is well worth it. Highest recommendation!   Jim's Review: Last week, in the context of the "Catwoman" review, I touched on a peculiar phenomenon: My preconceived notions of a film going into it often color my final perceptions. Over-touted films can then fail to live up to my expectations and ultimately disappoint; conversely, films upon which no end of derision has been heaped often turn out to be not as bad as all that after all. Going into "The Notebook," I hoped this circumstance would play itself out again. After all...I'd heard it was a pile of tripe. An over-romanticized, ham-fisted, schmaltzy, sickly-sweet potpurri pot of a movie...sopping with equal amounts of violins and bathos, and possessed of zero shame. The sort of film where they may as well pump fresh-cut onion fumes in through the ventilation ducts. An unapologetic, six-hanky weepie with no redeeming social value. And I'm happy to report, popular opinion was once again wrong. It was actually much, much worse than that. To wit: As the film opens, we're treated to scenes of someone in a rowboat slicing slowly through the peaceful, sunset-reflecting water of a marshy river to the tune of a melancholy piano melody drenched in ersatz reverb, scattering a flock of embarrassingly low-frame-rate CG waterfowl to soar "majestically" across the window of an impossibly stately rest home, where an old woman stands looking out the window sadly. At that point, my worst fears were confirmed: I knew I was more profoundly and thoroughly fucked than the head cheerleader on prom night. The old woman (Gena Rowlands), an Alzheimer's patient, is soon joined by an old man (James Garner) carrying a book. Apparently, he's there to read to her. Aww. He introduces himself, and sets about reading a love story. And anyone who can't see where this is going within the first five minutes is so painfully, tragically stupid that they DESERVE this movie. And a slap in the head. Most of the film then happens in flashback. The setting is the early, pre-war forties. The stage is set when Noah (Ryan Gosling), a laughably earnest, open-faced lumber-working rube gets it into his sleepy-eyed, sandy-blonde head that he has a chance with Allie (Rachel McAdams), the rich daughter of a local summer-home-owning mucky-muck. He pulls some stupid, "this-crap-only-works-in-bad-movies" stunts to get her attention that naturally make her fall for him. They have an intense, doomed whirlwind summer romance that, of course, ends come September. He promises to write, he writes letters every day for a year, Mom hides them because she doesn't approve, she eventually winds up getting engaged to a sweet but bland rich guy, then suddenly she sees a picture in the paper where Noah has restored their "dream house" to the exact specifications they'd fantasized about that magic summer...Blah, blah, blah. Everything that follows is such a banal cliché that anger (rather than the intended sympathy) is the overwhelming emotion as the film tenderly, gently, and condescendingly leads you by the hand to each marshmallow-soft plot point, then still feels the need to point it out to make sure you caught it. I mean, c'mon. There's heavy-handed, and then there's knuckle-dragging. This movie leaves both in the dust. However, it's not just the plot that's a joke, It fails for several other obvious reasons. The leads are one. Gosling is numbly inoffensive as Noah, good-hearted but as bland as a lukewarm bowl of unsweetened cream-of-wheat. James Marsden as Lon is all he needs to be: Not Noah. Still, even if he IS used as little more than window dressing and an inconvenient plot point, he comes off as a reasonably decent guy. McAdams' Allie fares far worse. Shrill, fickle, flighty, none-too-bright, rude, insipid and openly abusive, not to mention horse-faced, scrawny, and short, one is left with the too-frequently-seen-in-movies question of why two seemingly-okay guys are willing to even TOLERATE her in the first place, much less make bids for her affection. She's like Olive Oyl off her meds. And the older couple is no great shakes, either. Garner and Rowlands should have known better. They've both been good and occasionally even great in other projects, but (Rowland's familial obligations notwithstanding), they ought to have read this script and briskly strolled as fast as their legs could carry them in the opposite direction. As if all this wasn't bad enough...In addition to being syrupy, trite, and predictable to the point of absurdity, "The Notebook" has absolutely no idea of how bad it really is. See, every step of the way, it goes to great lengths to assure you that it's taking itself very, very seriously. It thinks it's an important, heartfelt film. And that's sad. Because, after over two hours of "On Golden Pond" meets "50 First Dates" meets "Sweet Home Alabama", the only thing that makes "The Notebook" tolerable is laughter. Hearty, enthusiastic laughter. Whether it's guffawing at the fact that the wardrobe and makeup departments have apparently gone to great lengths to transform the actor playing Allie's father into a doppelganger of Josef Stalin, or suppressing giggles behind a closed fist over forehead-slappingly obvious plot non-twists that you saw coming twenty minutes hence (but that are nevertheless "revealed" with crescendo string-section swells that hit you over the head with pseudo-dramatic "tension")...If you don't laugh, you cry. And not for the reasons the filmmaker intended in EITHER case. Speaking of the filmmaker, FURTHER rendering this film unforgivable is the fact that it was directed by Nick Cassavetes. That's Nick, son of John Cassavetes, auteur behind some of the most interesting and edgiest independent pieces of verité ever committed to celluloid. I imagine that, in the wake of this puddle of poo-poo hitting the screen, if one were able to hook some copper coils to the ends of the senior Cassavetes' casket, one could supply power to lower Manhattan for the better part of a month. I'm going to give "The Notebook" TWO sets of thumbs. When taken in the spirit in which it was intended, it gets a flat 8 thumbs down. It's ONLY redeeming quality is that, having been shot in the verdant South and costumed according to period, it is in certain stretches quite pretty to look at. But other than that, the only people who could derive even the merest scrap of enjoyment out of the tragi-romantic stylings of it are those poor, deluded souls who actually think "Titanic" DESERVED that bloody Oscar. The other set of thumbs applies only if one approaches the film in the only fashion that makes sense: As a broad, unintentional comedy. In THAT light, I give it six thumbs up for being one of the funniest films I've seen in ages. As a Drama: As an unintentional Comedy:   BackHome - Info - Reviews - Map - Message Board - Photo Album |
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