The Notebook (2004)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Noah Callhoun	Ryan Gosling	½
Allie Hamilton	Rachel McAdams	½
Duke	James Garner	½
Allie Calhoun	Gena Rowlands
Frank Calhoun	Sam Shephard
Anne Hamilton	Joan Allen	½
John Hamilton	David Thornton	½
Lon Hammond Jr.	James Marsden	½
Harry	Ed Grady
Nurse Selma	Jennifer Echols
Barker	Geoffrey Knight
Fin	Kevin Connolly

Review

The Notebook is a sweet and desperately well-intended film aiming for our sentimental vein and probably succeeding to some extent for most viewers. Although the vague and obligatory-feeling opening does little to set our two protagonists apart or take us back into the 1940s, the heartfelt romance which slowly develops is alluring. Perhaps it is exactly the film's kindness (there are exclusively good people in this film) which makes us feel for our characters, because the nicer your fiancé is and the more understanding your parents are, the more difficult it is to cross them. I do suspect that The Notebook paints an overly romanticized picture of life for workmen and uneducated people in the 1940s USA, but I am willing to go with it, because Ryan Gosling and Sam Shepard are believeable actors and because director Nick Cassavetes intercuts the melodious 1940s scenes with a tender account of two elderly protagonists, of which she suffers from dementia and he refuses to give her up. This segment, like the rest of the film, is both sad and beautiful - but in the end a touch too rose-tinted.