This is the kind of movie my wife had in mind when I started doing this. The fact that I have never seen The Notebook has come up a few times, so I finally broke down and watched it. I thought it was fine, but it’s just not my type of movie, which is why I never watched it to begin with. Not to be a basic bitch dude, but I just don’t find love stories all that interesting. At least, movies that are only about love stories; I need something extra in there. Bram Stoker’s Dracula comes to mind. That movie is essentially a love story, but there are vampires and blood and in-camera special effects, and it just looks cool. The Notebook has very little going on beyond the central relationship and one of the strongest attempts to make an audience cry that I can remember (for the record, I didn’t cry; more on that in Random Thoughts). Still, there are some crazy elements to The Notebook, and all of it happens in five minutes.
A Wild Five Minutes
For The Notebook to fill out a full running time, it’s essential to break Gosling and McAdams up for most of the film. It’s set up that her family thinks he’s trash, and things fall apart when they whisk her away back home, leaving Gosling heartbroken. Gosling decides to write her a letter a day for a year to see if she truly loves him. McAdams’s mother intercepts all these letters, leading Gosling to believe it’s over and time to move on (more on that in Random Thoughts). This starts off a crazy five minutes of story.
It starts with Fin (E from Entourage) messing things up between McAdams and Gosling for no reason. McAdams comes by the lumber yard while Gosling is off on a job somewhere, so she talks to Fin. Fin inexplicably tells her it’s over, and she just needs to leave Gosling alone. Why does he say this? McAdams reluctantly leaves, and Fin tells Gosling what happened, leading Gosling to drive off to find McAdams, but he’s too late. Clearly Gosling was not over McAdams, so why did Fin tell her this?
I got vibes from Fin that he actually had feelings for McAdams the whole time to the point that I expected Fin to play a bigger part in the relationship later on. That ended up not being the case, but am I crazy for thinking this? Either way, it was a dick move to tell McAdams that Gosling was done with her.
So Gosling writes the letters, thinks they are ignored, and decides to move on. He and Fin move to Atlanta, but then America enters WWII. They both enlist, and Fin dies in battle (that’s what you get for cock-blocking your best friend!). McAdams becomes a nurse and meets her future fiance (and future cuck) James Marsden.
This all happens in five minutes of running time. I get that the movie has to keep things moving, but it seems like a little more time could have been spent during the war or something. I would’ve liked this a lot more if there had been a moment between Fin and Gosling with Gosling becoming angry with Fin for the McAdams stuff. While angry with each other, Fin could die, leaving Gosling feeling guilty for not patching things up with Fin before he died. This would also make Gosling’s transformation into a crazy person later make a little more sense.
I didn’t expect to come away from this movie being more interested in what was going on with Fin, but this five minute segment just brought up so many questions for me. Perhaps that’s my biggest problem with The Notebook: I’m so uninterested in Gosling and McAdams’s relationship that I find E from Entourage more interesting.
Why My Wife Likes It
First off, I think all women were legally required to like this when it came out twenty years ago (feel old?). Beside that, she said she liked how direct Gosling was with McAdams. Sure, he threatened to kill himself for a first date, which is a bit of a red flag. But it was clear where he stood. I did argue a bit with this because I think a direct move would have been to actually go to McAdams’s house in Charleston instead of writing a letter every day like a romantic lunatic.
Random Thoughts
So about the crying. The reveal that the old couple was Gosling and McAdams’s characters was pretty predictable. Her suffering from dementia is definitely heartbreaking, but somehow it didn’t get to me enough to produce tears. And I’m a guy who cries like a baby at movies now that I have kids (at least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m reduced to a blubbering mess after watching Coco or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Speaking of Button, that’s another love story that has more interesting things going on. Anyway, this ending is extremely depressing with her breakthrough followed by her immediate regression. And just thinking about a lifelong relationship ending this way is heartbreaking. Them dying in each other’s arms is sad, too, but also a nice ending since she does seem to remember again right before they die. I can see why this brings the tears, but I just didn’t connect to the characters enough for it to get to me. Part of it might be the casting; I just don’t buy that Ryan Gosling becomes James Garner. I almost wish they had just used old age makeup on Gosling and McAdams or something, but I guess that would ruin the “surprise” of who the characters are even though I think everyone knows immediately who they are, but whatever. Anyway, I appreciate the effort to make people cry, but this is the rare occurrence of it not working on me.
The letter writing stuff just doesn’t work for me. First off, throughout an entire year, Gosling never thought to just make a trip to Charleston to see why she wasn’t responding? It’s not like she was moved to a hidden location; he literally had her address. I just wish there was some reason given for him not being able to make a trip to Charleston, especially since he has no problem going there later in the movie to get building plans approved. Are building plans more important than the love of your life? And how did the mom keep 365 letters away from McAdams? McAdams didn’t get the mail one single time in a year? Was her mom just waiting out there every single day? Look, I know I’m nitpicking here, but this should have been addressed in the movie. I just think the writer loved the romantic idea of someone writing a letter every day for a year and didn’t think about the logistics of it. Just like with the Fin thing, this wouldn’t bother me if I was more invested in the main relationship of the movie. But I wasn’t, so I focus on nitpicky things like this.
The foundation for any good relationship: threatening to kill yourself for a date and lying in front of traffic.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hate her dad. I mean, he's wearing a smoking jacket like an asshole, and he has the mustache of the dude who ties ladies to train tracks in old timey movies, but I just don't know if this is a bad rich man.
So you can go to Charleston to get building plans approved but not to see why the love of your life hasn't responded to 365 letters?
And you just knew Noah was sad and troubled because he grew a drama beard.
Dudes don't like this movie because of the unrealistic expectations it creates for a man: “Why can't you be impossibly handsome, fight in WWII, rebuild a plantation mansion by yourself, and turn into James Garner and read to me until I die of dementia?”
What a strange niche part James Marsden has perfected with this and Cyclops: decent guy who doesn’t deserve to be cheated on but the audience is okay with him being cheated on.
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