THE NOTEBOOK (Dir. Nick Cassavetes)

Acting Review:


The Notebook (2004) - ahh, one of the most popular fictional love stories of our time. This romantic drama, based on Nicholas Sparks' novel of the same name, relies heavily on the chemistry between Ryan Gosling (Noah) and Rachel McAdams (Allie) to succeed. Now, for a quick disclaimer, up until now I had never seen The Notebook, nor had I any desire to. After painstakingly sitting through all 124 minutes of it, I can safely say I do not wish to watch it again (p.s. if you don't hear from me next week it's probably because Bella has murdered me for stating such an outrageous opinion).

And look, perhaps I had such high expectations of the film that it could do nothing but fall flat as a result; but it also didn't help that I knew of the rumors that circulated about Gosling and McAdams not getting along behind the scenes. Having this information in the back of my mind arguably made me hypercritical of their chemistry while watching. Although I will says that despite said factors, Gosling and McAdams were clearly professional enough to put their personal dislike for one another aside for the sake of their craft.  The pair are decent actors; I wasn't completely sold on their on-screen romance, but they at least they didn't look they wanted to kill each other. I will say, however, that all I could wonder during their shared scenes was how often Gosling was even interacting with McAdams herself, in relation to this statement made by director, Nick Cassavetes:

"Maybe I'm not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not. And Ryan came to me, and there's 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, "Nick come here." And he's doing a scene with Rachel and he says, "Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me?" I said, "What?" He says, "I can't. I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this.""
(source)

All in all, I wanted to enjoy this film. Really, I did. But if the two leads in a romantic drama can't deliver unwavering chemistry, then maybe Cassavetes should have cast different actors. In saying that, I'm in the minority with my opinions on The Notebook, and don't really expect many to agree, nor do I expect to survive Bella's wrath. My indifference towards this film can be attributed to the aforementioned factors, or simply, I may just have a cold heart.


Signed, Vanii x