Review of The Notebook

The Notebook (2004)
1/10
Shallow and sugar coated to the point of becoming disturbing
15 December 2007
It's not that I dislike romance anything but this has movie tries so hard to be some sort of acronym to the word "chick flick" that it ends up shooting you to death with it's intended love arrows. Now could it be that I can't relate the alleged lovers in this movie? I mean I wasn't born in the 30s, I'm not a soldier so I was never in any wars (haven't we seen enough WW2 stories by the way?) and of course I don't have any family as of yet. But surely the universal power love is something everyone can relate to? Especially when depicted by a movie that uses no other element to drive its plot. Think again, the definition of love shown in this film is so naive, sugar-coated and completely oblivious of anything in the real world that it makes Star Wars look like something from the Discovery channel.

The so called "couple" in this film are only in love because the movie says they are, not because there's any sort of chemistry between the actors and not because the characters themselves even act like. Even Allie's alleged interest in painting felt so tacked on shallow and fake it made my head hurt. Speaking of Allie, it actually infuriates me to see the character acting like she has absolutely no control over her libido because the sex is just about the only thing the couple seems to have in common, and the only thing, aside from arguing, that they enjoy doing together. And yet this movie is supposed to be oh so romantic.

It's by some small miracle that this movie got the raving reviews it did, luckily it seems most of those were given by teenage girls and their tool boyfriends (no Oscars or anything) so I don't have to completely give up on humanity yet. If one day your girlfriend suddenly shows up all lyrical about this movie and wants it to "share it with you" I'd strongly advise any guy to end that relationship pronto. Your girlfriend will obviously already have built up her own twisted fantasy of what a relationship should be like, a fantasy that no guy, live or dead, could possibly live up to. Stay away.
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