The Notebook [Blu-ray]

Delivery Time: 7 to 15 Working Days Format: Blu-ray Imported: USA

In a nursing home, an elderly man reads to an elderly woman, telling her a story about young lovers who are separated by the girl’s disapproving parents, then get an unexpected second chance to find happiness. As he reads, the story weaves a spell, taking reader and listener into a romantic realm that transcends time and place. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ bestseller and starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner and Gena Rowlands, The Notebook lifts viewers out of the ordinary with beauty, tenderness and an unshakeable belief that love can create miracles. SPECIAL FEATURES • 2 Commentaries: Director Nick Cassavetes and Novelist Nicholas Sparks • Deleted Scenes • 4 Featurettes: • All in the Family: Nick Cassavetes • Nicholas Sparks: A Simple Story, Well Told • Southern Exposure: Locating The Notebook • Casting Rachel and Ryan • Rachel McAdams Screen Test • Theatrical Trailer
When you consider that old-fashioned tearjerkers are an endangered species in Hollywood, a movie like The Notebook can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy sweet and clogged with clichés, and one can only marvel at the irony of Nick Cassavetes directing a weeper that his late father John--whose own films were devoid of saccharine sentiment--would have sneered at. Still, this touchingly impassioned and great-looking adaptation of the popular Nicholas Sparks novel has much to recommend, including appealing young costars (Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams) and appealing old costars (James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the director's mother) playing the same loving couple in (respectively) early 1940s and present-day North Carolina. He was poor, she was rich, and you can guess the rest; decades later, he's unabashedly devoted, and she's drifting into the memory-loss of senile dementia. How their love endured is the story preserved in the titular notebook that he reads to her in their twilight years. The movie's open to ridicule, but as a delicate tearjerker it works just fine. Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember were also based on Sparks novels, suggesting a triple-feature that hopeless romantics will cherish. --Jeff Shannon