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The notebook, common sense media reviewers.

More sexy stuff than you'd expect for a syrupy romance.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The movie's ultimate message is that true love con

Though it's romantic to watch characters fall in l

Noah and Finn are engaged in active duty during Wo

Steamy passion between the two young lovers. Lots

Words/phrases used include "damn," "crap," "goddam

A 17-year-old smokes a cigar. Adults drink cocktai

Positive Messages

The movie's ultimate message is that true love conquers all. But there are also less-positive takeaways influenced by the time in which the movie takes place -- people of color are often portrayed as subservient, and both Ali and her mother say: "I am a stupid woman," as though repeating a truism that they have learned.

Positive Role Models

Though it's romantic to watch characters fall in love so wholly and stay devoted to each other, some of the choices that the lovers make -- like cheating on a relationship and lying to family members -- don't qualify as role model behavior.

Violence & Scariness

Noah and Finn are engaged in active duty during World War II. There's a bomb raid that incurs heavy losses. Ali nurses soldiers who have lost limbs. Noah and Ali fight passionately -- so much so that she hits and slaps him. Some poignant deaths.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Steamy passion between the two young lovers. Lots of making out and heavy petting, and characters undress in front of each other (only their shoulders are shown). A fairly graphic lovemaking scene (again, just shoulders visible, plus a brief glimpse of breast from the side).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Words/phrases used include "damn," "crap," "goddammit," "son of a bitch," and "pain in the ass."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A 17-year-old smokes a cigar. Adults drink cocktails, wine, champagne, and beer. Noah goes on a 10-day drinking binge. Characters drink in excess to ease pain or to lessen their inhibitions. Most meals are accompanied by alcohol.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this three-hanky World War II-era romance has pretty steamy sexual content for a PG-13-rated movie, including very passionate kissing and a fairly graphic lovemaking scene (though only shoulders are shown). A teenage couple agrees to have sex, but then she becomes very flustered and anxious, and an engaged girl has sex with a man who isn't her fiance. Characters drink and smoke; there's also brief battle violence and some poignant deaths. Teens will be watching with rapt attention to pick up clues about what true, passionate love looks like, but this type of sensual story may not be appropriate for the youngest teenagers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

Parents say (30)
Kids say (106)

Based on 30 parent reviews

Enjoyed the movie; should be rated R.

How's nobody talking about the toxic relationships in this, what's the story.

A man comes to read to a woman in a nursing home. It's a story about a summer romance between Allie ( Rachel McAdams ), the daughter of wealthy parents, and Noah ( Ryan Gosling ) a poor boy. They are crazy about each other. But her parents suddenly decide they have to break up, and they send her to school up north. He writes to her every day. She never responds. Then he goes off to fight in World War II and she falls in love with a handsome wounded officer named Lon ( James Marsden ) and agrees to marry him. But she sees Noah's picture in the newspaper. He is restoring the house he once told her he would make into a home for the two of them. Even though she has all but forgotten him and is perfectly happy being engaged to Lon, she has to see Noah once more. And after she sees him, she has to decide which man is the one she really loves.

Is It Any Good?

In THE NOTEBOOK, the details and dialog are a bit clumsy, but in the end romantics won't care. Also, it's hard to believe in Allie's feelings for Noah or Lon, partly because none of them ever come alive as characters. It's all description, not depiction.

We do care about the couple in the nursing home, but the connection to the other story is never strong enough to keep our attention. Gosling is one of the most talented actors of his generation, but he's not as good in this role. James Garner , Gena Rowlands , Sam Shepard as Noah's father and Joan Allen as Allie's mother give the material more than it deserves, and director Nick Cassavetes clearly wants this film to be a love letter to Rowlands, his mother. She is luminous, and we do believe she could inspire great love. Too bad the movie isn't a little bit better.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the movie depicts love and romance. Is this what a relationship is "supposed" to be like? Why or why not?

How does the movie treat sex ? Parents, talk to your kids about the real-life impact and consequences of sexual activity.

How do we know who we are meant to be with? Who should we listen to as we think about making that choice?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 25, 2004
On DVD or streaming : February 7, 2005
Cast : James Garner , Rachel McAdams , Ryan Gosling
Director : Nick Cassavetes
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : New Line
Genre : Romance
Run time : 124 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : some sexuality
Last updated : March 27, 2024

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The Notebook Reviews

The Notebook is one of those movies that is so sad, you could break out into tears just thinking about it.

Full Review | Oct 23, 2023

A tearjerker? It'll make you cry but it's not manipulative. A chick flick? It's just an inspiring love story that will touch your heart and make you believe true love can last a lifetime and conquer all. Isn't that what we all want?

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 21, 2023

There is always cinema room for the unabashed tearjerker, & THE N delivers on that "note." Any film that has Gena Rowlands in it will at least shine when she is on the screen & this was no exception. David Thornton with a handlebar mustache ... exquisite!

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 25, 2023

Though torn between two storylines, one of which vastly outshines the other, "The Notebook" is still an impressive production.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 7, 2020

Intelligently adapted and written by Jan Sardi, this is the tear-jerker of the summer. A chick flick? Yes. Classic Hollywood romance? Yes. Will it touch your heart? Without a doubt...

Full Review | Nov 13, 2019

James Garner and Gena Rowlands lend the story a graceful gravity that perhaps the rest of the film's more simplistic romanticism doesn't deserve.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 31, 2019

Never quite escapes the been-there-done-that feeling of Hollywood romantic cliché with sunny photography and perfectly tailored costumes to boot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 5, 2019

Frank Capra would be proud of the way Nick Cassavetes pulls at the heart strings... Have tissues at the ready.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2019

The Notebook is a ghastly piece of oldie slush which is tediously orchestrated by Nick Cassavetes.

Full Review | Feb 2, 2019

The Notebook is the kind of syrupy, heightened melodrama more likely to be found in the pages of a Mills & Boon paperback than on the silver screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 2, 2019

In a romance where paradise is a duck-filled pond, it helps to be mild-mannered.

Dentistry in the Renaissance could not have been more painful than watching this.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 2, 2019

The Notebook is premium romantic schlock and confirms director Nick Cassavetes (Rowlands' son) as a specialist in the genre after John Q in 2002.

Two good, young performers and a couple of not-too-shabby older ones not only make The Notebook worth watching but distinguish the film as one of the year's more pleasant surprises.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 2, 2019

The Notebook is a thoroughly old-fashioned romantic melodrama awash with misty-eyed sentiment as it charts the obstacles placed in the path of two young lovers from opposite sides of the social divide.

A shameless tear-jerker and as corny as they come, this retro romantic drama skilfully pushes all the right emotional buttons.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 2, 2019

A honey-dipped love story with a surprisingly tart aftertaste, The Notebook is a better-than-you'd-expect adaptation of Nicholas Sparks's bestselling novel of the same name.

A story about true love that makes you cry, the kind you don't forget. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Feb 2, 2019

What saves Notebook, or at least lifts it above itself, are the hints of hard-won grit that both Gosling and Garner inject into their characters.

Sure, The Notebook's story of first love tends toward the histrionic and self-important. But if that's case, perhaps Cassavetes, like Shakespeare, simply knows how to give the people what they want.

Full Review | Feb 7, 2018

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DVD & Streaming

The Notebook

Drama , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

Rachel McAdams as young Allie Hamilton; Ryan Gosling as young Noah Calhoun; Gena Rowlands as elderly Allie; James Garner as elderly Noah; Joan Allen as Anne Hamilton; David Thornton as John Hamilton; James Marsden as Lon; Sam Shepard as Frank Calhoun; Kevin Connolly as Fin

Home Release Date

Nick Cassavetes

Distributor

New Line Cinema

Movie Review

I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.

So opens The Notebook against the backdrop of a spectacular sunset over a lake, grabbing our hearts and never letting go as the extraordinary love story of Allie and Noah unfolds.

It begins at the end. Every day his failing health allows, an octogenarian shuffles down the corridors of a nursing home and enters an old woman’s room. Her mind is riddled by Alzheimer’s disease, but as the man reads from the handwritten pages of a worn notebook, science is defied and her memory is sparked by the timeless story of their love. …

The chronicle he reads begins one summer in 1930s North Carolina. Poor country boy Noah Calhoun meets rich city girl Allie Hamilton and is instantly attracted. Soon the two are inseparable, spending every waking moment together. He shows her how to have good ol’ country-style fun; she invites him into her world of fine arts and garden parties. By the end of the summer the teen soul mates have given their hearts, and most of their purity, to each other.

There’s just one problem: Allie’s parents have her future all planned out, and Noah doesn’t fit the picture of the wealthy, blue-blooded husband they have in mind for her. So without giving the young lovers a chance to even say goodbye, Mrs. Hamilton packs her little girl off to a fancy women’s college. Noah writes to Allie every day for a year, but never receives a reply. Unaware of parental deception, Allie and Noah are each devastated at the perceived abandonment by the other. They slowly rebuild their lives apart, haunted by memories of their first love.

Noah survives a stint in Patton’s third army during WWII, then returns to buy and restore his dream home, all the while fighting off Allie’s ghost. Allie gets an art degree and becomes a volunteer army nurse before settling down to the life her parents dreamed of. But why does she see Noah’s face while accepting the rich and handsome Lon’s proposal? When all hope seems lost, “fate” intervenes and they’re given a second chance at love.

Positive Elements

Noah’s dad models selflessness and generosity of spirit to his son. He teaches him to build a relationship one memory at a time by sharing life’s simple joys like fishing and eating pancakes at midnight. He also instills in his young son a love of poetry by having him repeatedly recite Walt Whitman to overcome a speech impediment. Noah’s love of the written word is embraced by Allie, and their shared passion for expressing their feelings in writing becomes the life support of their relationship. (In today’s high-tech world, it’s refreshing to find a story that upholds the power of the written word.)

Mrs. Hamilton redeems her broken relationship with her daughter by returning Noah’s letters at a critical moment and sharing a story from her own youth that helps Allie choose what path she will take. Noah’s example of placing his wife before all others is an inspiration to a generation taught to put their own needs first. He also makes it clear that love is hard, everyday work, and that squabbles don’t have to undo it. Ultimately, he gives up his beloved home and personal life to reside in a separate wing at her nursing home, not for health reasons, but to allow himself constant access to Allie.

Another poignant lesson here is that all human life has value. The elderly and mentally disabled still have much to offer and are not ready to be cast by society into the invisible realm of shadow people. This is reflected not only in the relationship between the aging Allie and Noah, but also in the compassionate treatment they receive from nursing home attendants who come up with creative ways to accommodate patients’ emotional and physical needs.

Spiritual Elements

The narrator, commenting on the doctor’s prognosis of Allie’s dementia, says, “Science only comes so far and then comes God.” He also speaks of the “miracle” of love. While Allie and Noah never discuss spiritual matters (except for lighthearted banter about being a bird in some past life), their love matures into the embodiment of God’s ideal expressed in 1 Corinthians 13.

Sexual Content

Author Nicholas Sparks told ChristianityToday.com that he believed his stories (most notably A Walk to Remember ) resonated with Christians because, “I have certain moral parameters that I do not cross in writing; I don’t write about adultery or kids having premarital sex.” His book The Notebook mentions (briefly) that the teenage Noah and Allie “both lost their virginity.” This movie, however, translates those four words into an onscreen romp that’ll leave families squirming uncomfortably in their seats. After exchanging promises, Noah and Allie shed their clothes one piece at a time, then engage in totally nude foreplay. (Calculated positioning of arms, legs and the camera, along with the low light, obscures both bodies’ most “delicate” parts.) Allie’s remaining virtue is rescued (and moviegoers’ along with her) when Noah’s best friend barges in and tells them Allie’s folks have the cops out looking for them.

Years later the now-adult couple’s second tryst, and actual consummation of their passions (an event written about in considerably detail in the book) occurs long into Allie’s engagement to a “good man” that she says more than once she’s in love with. She playfully rebukes Noah’s advances with, “You wouldn’t dare. I’m a married woman!” He counters by reminding her she isn’t married yet . They then commence a two-day love affair that, because of its fiery intensity and just-shy of explicit nudity feels like it lasts at least that long onscreen.

Thinking Allie is lost to him forever, Noah “takes the sting of loneliness” away by becoming bed buddies with a war widow named Martha. (Sex is implied when Martha gets out of bed nude; she’s seen from the back, from the waist up.) Martha knows he’s thinking of another woman during their romps but accepts his explanation that “the things you want are all broken, gone.” Martha goes over to Noah’s house after he’s reunited with Allie and asks to meet his “one.” Inexplicably, instead of being jealous, Martha is inspired by the love she sees. Her parting words to Noah are, “For the first time since I lost [my husband], I feel like I have something to look forward to.”

Elsewhere, Allie licks ice cream off Noah’s face on a public street (risqué stuff for 1930s rural America). And he slaps her bottom as she gets out of his truck. A nude Allie is seen painting (waist up from the back). A few characters wear revealing outfits.

Violent Content

Allie pushes and slaps Noah several times during a heated argument. (To his credit, Noah refuses to retaliate.) Noah’s best friend, Fin, dies in battle. (War images are brief and tempered.)

Crude or Profane Language

A half-dozen misuses of God’s name (three of “g–d–n”), and a dozen or so other mild profanities (“a–,” “h—,” “d–n”). The elderly Allie, commenting on a notebook passage, says, “She should have told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

The narrator tells us that Noah goes on a 10-day drinking binge after seeing Allie with her fiancé, Lon. Indeed, both Noah and Allie drink quite a bit to smother their pain. Allie and Lon seem a bit tipsy while drinking champagne at a nightclub. Lon has a casual drink in his office. When the adult Allie and Noah have beers with dinner, she tells him she’s a cheap drunk. Guests at a party drink and smoke cigarettes. WWII soldiers and Lon also inhale.

Other Negative Elements

A few juvenile hijinks don’t cause much of a ruffle onscreen, but could result in real-life unhappy endings if imitated: An impetuous young Noah dangles from the heights of a Ferris wheel with one hand to capture Allie’s attention. (She responds by undoing his pants and revealing his boxers.) When Noah challenges Allie to lie down in the middle of an intersection (remember, this is rural America) in the middle of the night, she asks, “What happens if a car comes?” His deadpan reply? “You die. You have to learn to trust.” Elsewhere, army recruits are seen nude. (Their hands cover their privates.)

Allie’s parents make no secret of the fact that they believe Noah isn’t worthy of their daughter. They like him all right, he’s just not rich enough and doesn’t have the right daddy. On the night of the couple’s breakup, Noah overhears Allie’s mother calling him “trash, trash, trash!” Mrs. Hamilton’s deception of hiding Noah’s letters from Allie succeeds in keeping the couple apart for years, but at the cost of a strained mother-daughter relationship.

Some will write The Notebook off as yet another emotionally manipulative and overly-sappy “chick flick.” But because it looks so tenderly at an elderly couple stricken by Alzheimer’s, others will find themselves attracted to it, placing themselves into the story and living out its emotion. It might also be seen as a timely reflection of the deep and lasting loved shared by Nancy and Ronald Reagan, whose love story has made a permanent cultural impression. Just as Nancy’s commitment and love transcended the emotional and physical gulf that marked her husband’s disease, so Noah’s steadfast love for Allie sustains them.

Nicholas Sparks has said his story “is a metaphor for God’s love for us all. The theme is everlasting, unconditional love. It also goes into the sanctity of marriage and the beauty you can find in a loving relationship.” Although that metaphor gets more than a little muddied by premarital sex, Noah and Allie ultimately realize the full potential of mature love. Most romantic dramas only celebrate the chaotic, spontaneous flush of young love, serving it up as the pinnacle of the relationship before either settling down on a complacent plateau or crashing down the slippery slope of dysfunction. Sparks’ movie shows a rare understanding of the kind of love God desires for married couples, a once-in-a-lifetime deep intimacy of spirit, expressed without boundaries and growing in strength and loveliness as time goes by. It is the kind of soul-satisfying love that God established as a demonstration of His own love for His people, hence the author’s metaphor. That makes it all the more regrettable that steamy sex scenes will give a lot of adults reason to pause, and push the tale (at least unedited) out-of-bounds for discerning teens.

Rhonda Handlon

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The Notebook: 7+ Thoughts I Had While Rewatching The Ryan Gosling And Rachel McAdams Movie

If you're a bird, I'm a bird.

Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook

The Notebook is one of the best romantic movies of all time. It’s a beautiful tale of an unbreakable love story between people of different social classes. On paper, they would never work. However, their love is powerful enough to break any barriers that stand in their way. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams star as Noah and Allie, the main protagonists of this love story.

I wouldn’t say The Notebook ranks in my top 5 favorite romantic movies of all time, but it’s definitely in the top 20. The undeniable chemistry between Gosling and McAdams makes it a must-watch for all romance movie fans. Because I haven’t seen a romantic movie that I’ve really loved in a while, I decided to revisit some of my favorite movie romances, and that included a rewatching of The Notebook. I have some thoughts.

Warning The Notebook spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook

Ryan Gosling And Rachel McAdams Give Some OF Their Best Performances In The Notebook

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are both really good actors. I would even argue that Gosling is one of the best actors who hasn’t won an Oscar. While rewatching The Notebook , I couldn’t help but be even more convinced of this opinion. Gosling and McAdams completely convince us that they’re in love. Not only that, you see how much they put into these performances.

In the scene where Noah hears Allie’s parents calling him trash, how can your heart not break watching Noah react to it? In the scene where Allie pretends to be a bird, how can you not feel her joy? You feel all of these characters’ emotions because McAdams, Gosling, and the entire cast give really strong performances.

For two-plus hours, Gosling becomes Noah and McAdams becomes Allie. I’ve seen many Rachel McAdams movies and many Ryan Gosling movies and Allie and Noah are some of their most beloved characters because of how good they are in these roles. The Notebook is one of the best Rachel McAdams movies and one of the best Ryan Gosling movies . They’re both really outstanding in this film.

The Costumes And Makeup Departments Are The MVPs Of This Movie

The Notebook starts with Allie and Noah as teens, then ends with them as older adults. At some point, they’re in their mid-20s. The oldest versions of Allie and Noah are played by James Garner and Gena Rowlands. The rest of the ages are played by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. They completely convince you that they’re teens at the start of the movie. This is partly because of their acting skills, and partly because of the makeup department.

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They tone back the makeup with McAdams to give her a fresh face to portray teen Allie. Clean-shaven Ryan Gosling looks like a teen. Once he has facial hair, he becomes an adult Noah who has seen some things. As Allie ages, more makeup appears to be added, which makes her look older and more sophisticated. The makeup is really subtle but completely transforms these characters.

The 1940s fashion is really gorgeous in The Notebook. Every one of Allie’s outfits, I would love to steal. They’re just so fabulous. The costume designers also use the clothes in very interesting ways. I noticed that the outfit that Allie and Noah wear when they meet, mimics the clothing that they’re wearing as older adults, at least in terms of colors. The Notebook is one of those movies where it’s clear that multiple elements, including costumes and makeup, work in harmony to make this such a memorable film.

The Notebook Breakup Scene Is One of The Best In History

Thankfully, The Notebook isn’t one of the great breakup movies , because that would totally ruin the vibe of the film. However, the film has one of the greatest movie breakup scenes. Many adore The Notebook because of all the major declarations of love, the steamy sex scene, and the enticing chemistry between the lead characters. I love all those things as well, but I also really like the main breakup scene.

It starts with Noah having his heart broken by hearing what Allie’s parents think of him. Then it leads to him ending it. We see every emotion in that scene, from anger to desperation to confusion to fear to hopelessness. It’s brilliant. Then we see parallel elements of that scene in the part where Noah fights for them to be together, but Allie doesn’t want to break Lon’s ( James Marsden ) heart.

The Notebook breakup scene just feels so realistic and raw.

Rachael McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook

The Drama And Romance Always Sweeps Me Away

Until rewatching The Notebook , I didn’t realize how much the film engulfs you. The two-plus hours pass fast because I’m so drawn into this story and this world. I know what is going to happen, but I can’t look away. It’s one of those rare films that really takes hold of you from start to finish. You feel all their emotions, you suspend reality and reason, and you let your hopeless romantic side thrive.

Like Allie and Noah’s love story, The Notebook can be all-consuming.

James Marsden and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook

I Can’t Help But Feel Bad For Lon

Lon joins the list of movie boyfriends involved in a love triangle who do nothing wrong but just aren’t the right guy. Sometimes the other guy in these types of movies sucks. Lon is not one of those guys. Allie not only cheats on him, but she does it while completely forgetting about him for days. According to my calculation, Allie and Noah only dated for a few months (before getting married and starting their life together), but she dated Lon for at least three years before completely dumping him.

Even if you love Allie and Noah together, you kind of have to think that they were quite terrible for how they treated their exes. At least poor Martha (Jamie Brown) could see their romance as a window of what could be for her. We don’t even completely get Lon’s reaction to the breakup.

For all we know, the Allie breakup could have been Lon’s villain origin story. I know that viewers aren’t supposed to hate Allie and Noah, because we’re supposed to view this all as them being so in love that they would always only want each other. However, love shouldn’t be an excuse to just cheat and neglect your fiancé.

James Garner and Gena Rowlands in The Notebook

Is The Notebook Ending Tragic Or Happy?

When I originally saw The Notebook , I considered it a happy ending. They were able to live their lives together and even leave the world together. However, watching it again, I couldn’t help but wonder if this isn’t exactly a happy ending. Yes, they got to die together, but it’s pretty terrible that they reached the stage in their life where their bodies began to betray them. That’s part of life and aging, but it’s also a pretty downer way to end a love story. Realistic? Probably? Downer? Absolutely.

The sadness of The Notebook ending makes it easy to see why some versions don’t show it. It’s definitely a happy ending that they got to live a full life together and were able to leave the world together. The tragedy comes with the whole aging process and how it can disrupt even a beautiful love story, even if only temporarily.

Other Thoughts

The Notebook rewatch sparked so many thoughts, some silly, some profound, and more just ramblings. Here are my other thoughts.

I think I just really love period piece love stories. Something about them makes everything more tragic and heightened.
The Notebook really has a thing for birds. I’m assuming they’re a metaphor for Allie feeling caged by parents, and society, but finally being able to fly free at the end.
I love writing letters, but even I find the idea of 365 letters kind of tedious.
I had completely erased the war part of The Notebook from my memory. It’s so quick that it’s barely in there.
I would love a prequel about Allie’s mom and her ex. Basically, Noah and Allie, but one that doesn’t work out.
The Notebook has so many great quotes.
Rachel McAdams’ lungs must have hurt with all the random screaming moments in the movie.

You can find The Notebook and plenty of other great romance movies on HBO Max .

Stream The Notebook on HBO Max .

Spent most of my life in various parts of Illinois, including attending college in Evanston. I have been a life long lover of pop culture, especially television, turned that passion into writing about all things entertainment related. When I'm not writing about pop culture, I can be found channeling Gordon Ramsay by kicking people out the kitchen.

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My favourite film aged 12: The Notebook

Continuing our series revisiting childhood movie passions, we look at a romance that could’ve been schlock, if not for Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling’s chemistry

Read all the other My favourite film choices
The best arts and entertainment during self-isolation

F lash back to the summer of 2007: Spider-Man 3 was in theatres. Two of the top five most viewed YouTube videos were by the band My Chemical Romance. And The Notebook, a movie starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling as star-crossed teenage lovers who reconnect as adults, was three years old. The famous re-enactment of the film’s climactic lift-and-kiss at the MTV movie awards by its stars, then a real-life couple, was two years old. I was 13 years old and, true to sheltered oldest child form, didn’t know about any of this. And so one sleepover night in my friend’s basement, I faced at least three aghast faces: “You haven’t seen The Notebook?!?”

The Notebook probably has fans outside my demographic – it’s an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, a book/author/genre marketed to middle-aged women – but for girls in middle school (or, at least, my middle school in suburban Ohio) between 2004 and 2008 or so, it was a foundational text. It was the romantic movie of choice, a portal into couple-shipping YouTube and, later, Tumblr holes, a benchmark for years of unrealistic dating expectations. You wanted to know what sex was “supposed” to look and sound like AND tell everyone you bawled at the profound idea of love transcending old age? You watched The Notebook.

For those who haven’t seen it, The Notebook follows 17-year-old Allie (McAdams) as she moves to a small South Carolina town for the summer and meets Noah (Gosling), a construction worker fond of Walt Whitman and bold gestures, such as threatening to jump off a ferris wheel to get Allie to go out with him. They fall in love, then break up (she’s rich, he’s not; her parents disapprove) and, separately, serve in the second world war . He pines for her; she gets engaged to handsome, preternaturally forgiving solider played by James Marsden. They reconnect, and things are complicated. The story is narrated by the older Noah, who reads from a notebook composed by Allie as a totem to bring her back from the dementia eclipsing her memories.

This twist – Noah and Allie have together composed an epic love story that she mostly can’t remember – landed like a gut punch for us as emotionally chaotic seventh-graders who had imagined our sunset years approximately zero times. All of us watching that summer night ended the movie in tears, which was a cathartic bonding experience on its own. But at 13, on the cusp of high school but seemingly, for me, light-years away from sneaking out with a boy, the main draw was the heat between McAdams and Gosling. Their chemistry was palpable and hungry with a sharp, heady sting. (It is transparent they were falling in love off-screen.) These two were brain-meltingly hot, an unknowing factory of aspirational summer love gifs .

Importantly for me then, the film hinges on one pivotal, rain-soaked scene in which Allie asks Noah why he never wrote her when they broke up. (Actually, he wrote her 365 letters! He wrote her every day for a year!). He proclaims, famously: “It wasn’t over … it STILL isn’t over.” At the time, I had no older friends or siblings, no health class, just the steamy handprint from Titanic, so I was thrilled when they kiss, and he pushes her against a wall, and carries her up the stairs, and strips off her soaked clothes … and the camera keeps rolling . As far as movies go, The Notebook has a rather tame sex scene – all soft lighting, swelling music, delicate shots that don’t reveal much, nudity-wise. The camera mostly lingers on McAdams’ face as she has a transcendent time (again, disappointingly high expectations were set by this movie). The whole scene is only about 4.5 minutes long, but at 13 this felt like an eternity, and a guidebook. Oh, adulthood has this? You lose your senses and can’t take your hands off someone? Good to know!

Rewatching The Notebook for the first time in years, it’s clear, of course, how silly it was to base my idea of maturity on this movie, and also how stellar McAdams and Gosling’s performances remain. The Notebook could have been a solid B-movie romance (see: every other Nicholas Sparks adaptation), but the lead performances power it far higher than its melodramatic parts. It is almost thrilling – and the main draw for me now – to watch two ascendant, now-acclaimed actors make the hairpin turns of its dialogue somewhat convincing. The idea of actually fighting this way ? Laughable. But that look Noah gives Allie when he asks: “Goddammit, what do you WANT?” Yeah, that still hits.

A couple of weeks ago, before this series assignment, I rewatched The Notebook on instinct. It felt good during, you know, ALL THIS, to return to an old favourite, to slip along the slick grooves of worn emotions. To retrace the lines of this familiar ride, even if I now find many of them horribly cheesy, and my feelings cringingly earnest. How to think of it now? I defer to Gosling, who said in that fateful year , 2007: “God bless The Notebook. It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life.” I would not classify The Notebook as one of my great loves, but still: god bless this movie, flawed textbook that it was, for introducing me to a new vision of the adult future, and for saying: Hang on. It’s a bumpy ride of feelings ahead but one day, you’ll appreciate them.

My favourite film aged 12
Ryan Gosling
Rachel McAdams

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"The Notebook": Movie Review and Analysis

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Updated: 23 November, 2023

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Works Cited

Martz, J. (2017). Online vs. Traditional Learning: What are the Differences?. Arizona Christian University.
Leaf Group Education. (2021). Online vs. Traditional Education. Classroom.
University of the Potomac. (2020). Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Classes.
National Education Association. (2013). NEA Policy Brief: Online and Blended Learning.
Li, N., Marsh, J. A., & Zheng, B. (2018). Blended learning in K-12: Evidence-based practices and promising approaches. Journal of Educational Research, 111(4), 443-458.
Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2017). Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017. Babson Survey Group.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2021). Enrollment and Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2018; and Financial Statistics and Academic Libraries, Fiscal Year 2018: First Look (Provisional Data). U.S. Department of Education.
Schreurs, J., Jarodzka, H., De Laat, M., & Sloep, P. (2018). The effects of online vs. blended learning on student engagement, learning outcomes, and experience. Educational Technology Research and Development, 66(1), 57-79.
Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. US Department of Education.
Sitzmann, T., Kraiger, K., Stewart, D., & Wisher, R. (2006). The comparative effectiveness of web-based and classroom instruction: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 59(3), 623-664.

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Notebook Movie Review: It Will Bind Your Emotions Together!

The brilliance of manoj kumar khatoi's cinematography helps the rise and shine of the viewing experience..

Star Cast: Zaheer Iqbal, Pranutan Bahl, Mir Mohammed Mehroos, Mir Mohammed Zayan, Mozim Bhat

Director: Nitin Kakkar

What’s Good: The kids are charming, teachers are alluring, Kashmir is breathtaking – on the whole, you get a whole bundle of cuteness!

What’s Bad: The second half and the number of cinematic liberties the script takes – viewers will leave the theater with some logical unanswered questions.

Loo Break: In the second half, maybe!

Watch or Not?: The target audience of this film is very clear if you can digest lighthearted rom-coms – go for it!

The story is set over a course of two years from 2007 to 2008. It starts in the later year in which we see Kabir (Zaheer Iqbal), a failed army guy, getting a call from his uncle asking for a favour. He’s requested to handle a small school in a very remote area of Kashmir. Having 5-7 kids, the school was led by a different teacher, Firdaus (Pranutan Bahl) in 2007. Kabir finds Firdaus’ diary in the school and he starts going through it.

With every page, he discovers a new meaning to his life and falls in love with the writing of Firdaus. Struggling with the kids, he tries to be in their good books. He goes to search Pranutan but where is she a year later? Will they both meet or as said in the trailer, their love story will just be a part of a notebook? That’s how the story circles around the main plot of the film.

Notebook Movie Review: Script Analysis

I haven’t seen The Teacher’s Diary (Thai film on which Notebook is based), so let’s keep the comparison part aside. Darab Farooqi’s adapted screenplay surely captures the essence of Kashmir. The brilliance of Manoj Kumar Khatoi’s cinematography helps the rise and shine of the viewing experience. A commendable job by the original screenplay writers (Nithiwat Tharatorn, Sopana Chowwiwatkul, Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn, Supalerk Ningsanond) to narrate such a complex story in a very simple way. The writers also put in a small effort to kick in the nostalgia with Nokia 6600 and a mention of 30-minutes free Pizza delivery.

The non-linear way of narration, never for a frame, goes out of the sync. The movie dips deep in the second half where the cinematic liberties take over the driving seat. All the build-up for the second half, in a way, ends up with a half baked conclusion. When you are designing a love story without letting the leads meet, you need to make sure it’s an emotional explosion when they actually come together for the first time. That lacks here & as I said I don’t know how was the original one; if it was as same, that also would be a disappointment.

Notebook Movie Review: Star Performance

If there’s anything that looks more beautiful than Kashmir on-screen, it’s Pranutan Bahl. She’s convincing with her actions & enjoys a flourishing debut. Zaheer Iqbal, too, is self-assuring when it comes to emoting. With a sturdy physique, he still has a childlike innocence on his face and that works in his favour.

The real heroes of the film are the kids. Their track surprisingly gets more interesting as it instantly connects. Everyone is brilliant but Mir Mohammed Mehroos (Imran) and Mir Mohammed Zayan (Tariq) get the maximum mileage. Mozim Bhat’s Junaid is a very incomplete character and it could’ve been very better favouring the script.

Notebook Movie Review: Direction, Music

It’s a hat-trick of good films for Nitin Kakkar, after Filmistaan and Mitron. The best thing about this man is that he’s self-aware. He knows what kind of film is he making and stays in that zone throughout. His version of Kashmir is even more beautiful, thanks to the rich production value.

Vishal Mishra finally gets a fully-fledged presence behind the orchestra. Nai Lagda & Bhumro blend in very well with the narration avoiding the forced nature of songs. I wish Mohit Chauhan’s Safar had better lyrics because it had everything on par with excellence. Do I need to say anything about the background score? Because it’s by Julius Packiam, the man behind Tiger & Baaghi franchise, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan (estimate yourself).

Notebook Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, Notebook is bring-your-heart-to-the-theater flick. It has nothing extraordinary & that’s the speciality of the film. It is an abundance of cuteness bundled with a tour package of unexplored Kashmir playing few beautiful songs in the background.

Three Stars!

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Notebook movie review: Salman Khan backs a winning tale of two strangers and a bunch of darling kids in Kashmir

Unlike with the remake of Subhash Ghai’s Hero, in Notebook, Salman Khan has chosen his actors well

Language: Hindi with Kashmiri

Sometimes sweet simplicity is all it takes.

Director Nitin Kakkar’s Notebook is set largely on a pristine lake in Jammu and Kashmir where an ex-Armyman gives a new career a shot, taking to teaching Kashmiri kids in a remote island school. Kabir is battling his own demons while coping with the unique challenges of the new job when he comes across a diary written by his predecessor.

Firdaus was not one to accept authority blindly. While at Wular Public School she poured her frustration, loneliness and life’s great questions on to the pages of that notebook, which ultimately falls into Kabir’s hands.

The young man is, expectedly, soon drawn to this woman he has not met but has come to know well through her innermost musings, and decides that he is in love with her. Truth be told, 20 years back I might have been moved by this love-across-barriers-of-space-and-time aspect of the film’s storyline, but the older me believes that while attraction is not something within our control, love is a decision and not a word to be bandied about lightly.

Still, Notebook works because the Firdaus-Kabir lurve angle is not rubbed in our faces beyond endurance, because the narrative style is filled with an innocent sincerity that is hard to find in mainstream commercial Hindi cinema these days, because the individual stories of Firdaus and Kabir are more intricate than the storyteller’s unassuming tone lets on (and of course it is natural that they would be attracted to each other since, after all, they were genuinely getting to know each other through their writings).

Most of all, Notebook works because of those children. Everything about them - the adorable cast, Firdaus’ commitment to them, Kabir’s increasing attachment for them, their playfulness, and one boy’s desperation for an education.

The trailer of Notebook emphasises the Firdaus-Kabir romance and relegates the children to the background, although the intersection of the bond developing between all of them is its actual selling point. No doubt there is space here for greater detailing and depth in the characterisation of most of the little ones, but there is still enough in the screenplay to make the interactions with these bright, mischievous darlings enjoyable, and to make the boy Imran in particular both memorable and heart-tugging.

Nitin Kakkar knows well how to make a political comment without lecturing his audience. He did it with rip-roaring humour in his debut film Filmistaan, and with endearing understatedness in last year’s Mitron that was pulled down solely and entirely by the decision to cast Jackky Bhagnani as the leading man.

Troubled Kashmir is obviously a fertile playing field for a filmmaker like him, and he does a commendable job of driving home the tensions and pain beneath the scenic tranquility of this jannat. The mother who takes a crucial decision for her children, a despairing father, a boy who can envision a future in which he is sucked into the bitterness but also sees a way out of this morass, a man who stood by friends when their lives were under threat, a woman in a patriarchal world who knows her mind and is unafraid to speak it, a man who gets a bird’s eye view of the human cost of war and does not casually brush aside any loss as “collateral damage”, they are all present in this short, charming tale beaming with an optimism that is perhaps occasionally simplistic but serves as a much-needed salve for the soul in the divisive times we live in.

Imran is played by the handsome child debutant Mir Mohammed Mehroos whose mature, deeply felt performance belies his age and inexperience. Each member of this ensemble has something to offer, but this new entrant deserves to be singled out, as does Mir Sarwar who plays his father with flair.

The adult debutants of the film are both proteges of producer Salman Khan, as media reports tell us. Pranutan Bahl who plays Firdaus is the granddaughter of screen legend Nutan. Zaheer Iqbal, Notebook’s Kabir, is reportedly Khan’s friend’s son. Unlike with the remake of Subhash Ghai’s Hero , here Khan has chosen well.

Pranutan was born to be before the camera. Neither she nor Zaheer would fit conventional Bollywood definitions of prettiness, but they possess an X Factor that counts for much more than that.

Notebook is based on the Thai film Teacher’s Diary whose writer-director Nithiwat Tharatorn and co-writers are duly credited here. Their screenplay has been adapted by Darab Farooqi with dialogues by Sharib Hashmi and Payal Asar.

Kashmir is not a mere gimmick in the reworking, it is a well-considered change of setting. Like the fact that Firdaus and Kabir belong to communities on opposite sides of the socio-political schism running through the state, the choice of place too is not underlined or turned into a sermon.

With the exception of ‘Bumro’, the soundtrack is not extraordinary when heard independently, but the songs are inserted nicely into the narrative and fit the mood of the film well. ‘Bumro’ of course is infectious. This Kashmiri folk song was earlier used in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Hrithik Roshan-Preity Zinta-starrer Mission Kashmir . The loudness of that earlier film is a sharp contrast to the determined quietness of Notebook.

I can imagine some people seeing a saviour complex in a tension-ridden scene featuring Imran, his Dad and Kabir in Notebook, the sort of complex that usually dominates stories of race, caste and gender (look no further than this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner Green Book ), but to my mind that would be an unfair criticism in this case. That scene is a culmination of the actions of every single player in the drama until then, not Kabir’s alone, even though the others are not foregrounded in that moment.

The most problematic aspect of the film comes elsewhere, in the “ ladkiyan sab aise hi hotey hai ”, all-women-are-traitors line taken by one of the characters, that is left unresolved despite being a dominant track in so many mainstream Indian films and in the sense of male victimhood that pervades the backlash against feminism.

Notebook is not perfect, but like the sterling Kashmir waterscapes in the film camouflaging so much turmoil, and captured here so beautifully by cinematographer Manoj Kumar Khatoi, it too is worth a visit.

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The Notebook

An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes.
With almost religious devotion, Duke, a kind octogenarian inmate of a peaceful nursing home, reads daily a captivating story from the worn-out pages of his leather-bound notebook to a fellow female patient. To keep her company, Duke recounts the fascinating love affair between impecunious but poetic country boy Noah and Allie, an affluent city girl. And little by little, Duke unfolds a Southern, lumber-scented summer romance beneath the tall trees of late 1930s North Carolina. Indeed, it seems as if the silent manuscript possesses the unfathomable power to penetrate the opaque clouds that enclose the silver-haired dame; slowly but surely, the enchanted lady becomes immersed in the strangely alluring fairy tale of the young ardent lovers' highs and lows. But nobody knows what tomorrow holds. Are all summer loves doomed to fail? — Nick Riganas
The movie focuses on an old man reading a story to an old woman in a nursing home. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who meet one evening at a carnival. But they are separated by Allie's parents who disapprove of Noah's unwealthy family, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her for several years, Allie meets and gets engaged to a handsome young soldier named Lon. Allie, then, with her love for Noah still alive, stops by Noah's 200-year-old home that he restored for her, "to see if he's okay." It is evident that they still have feelings for each other, and Allie has to choose between her fiancé and her first love. — Jessica Cymerman
In a modern-day nursing home, an elderly man named Duke ( James Garner ) begins to read a love story from his notebook to a female fellow patient ( Gena Rowlands ). The story begins in 1940. At a carnival in Seabrook Island, South Carolina, local country boy Noah Calhoun ( Ryan Gosling ) sees seventeen-year-old heiress Allie Hamilton ( Rachel McAdams ) for the first time and is immediately smitten. She continuously refuses his persistent advances until their well-meaning friends lure them together; they then get to know each other on a midnight walk through empty Seabrook. Noah and Allie spend an idyllic summer together. One night, a week before Allie is to leave town, she and Noah go up to an abandoned house called The Windsor Plantation. Noah tells her that he hopes to buy the house, and Allie makes him promise that the house will be white, with blue shutters, a walk-around porch, and a room that overlooks the creek so she can paint. They intend to make love for the first time, but are interrupted by Noah's friend Fin ( Kevin Connolly ) with the news that Allie's parents have the police out looking for her. When Allie returns home, her disapproving parents ban her from seeing Noah again. Allie fights with Noah outside and the two decide to break up. Allie immediately regrets the decision but Noah drives away. The next morning, Allie's mother reveals that they are going home that morning. Allie frantically tries to find Noah, but is forced to leave without saying good-bye. The Hamiltons then send Allie to New York, where she begins attending Sarah Lawrence College. Noah, devastated by his separation from Allie, writes her one letter a day for a year, only to get no reply as Allie's mother keeps the letters from her. Noah and Allie have no choice but to move on with their lives. Allie continues to attend school, while Noah and Fin enlist to fight in World War II. Fin is killed in battle. Allie becomes a nurse for wounded soldiers. There, she meets the wealthy Lon Hammond, Jr. ( James Marsden ), a well-connected young lawyer who is handsome, sophisticated, charming and comes from old Southern money. The two eventually become engaged, to the joy of Allie's parents, although Allie sees Noah's face when Lon asks her to marry him. When Noah returns home, he discovers his father has sold their home so that Noah can go ahead and buy The Windsor Plantation. While visiting Charleston to file some paper work, Noah witnesses Allie and Lon kissing at a restaurant, causing Noah to go a little crazy, convincing himself that if he fixes up the house, Allie will come back to him. While trying on her wedding dress in the 1940s, Allie is startled to read about Noah completing the house in the style section of a Raleigh newspaper and faints. She visits Noah in Seabrook and he invites her to dinner, during which Allie tells Noah about her engagement. Noah questions whether Allie's future husband is a good man and she reassures Noah that he is. Later in the evening, Noah invites Allie to come back tomorrow. In the present, it is made clear that the elderly woman is Allie suffering from dementia, which has stolen her memories and Duke is her husband. Allie does not recognize their grown children and grandchildren, who beg Duke to come home with them. He insists on staying with Allie. The next morning, Allie and Noah go rowing on a nearby lake and begin to reminisce about their summer together. As a rain storm starts Noah rows to shore, where Allie demands to know why Noah never wrote to her. After the revelation that Noah had indeed written to Allie, they share a passionate kiss, before making love into the night. The next day, Allies mother appears on Noah's doorstep, telling Allie that Lon has followed her to Seabrook after Allie's father told him about Noah. Her mother takes Allie out for a drive to show her that there had been a time in her life when she could relate to Allie's present situation. On returning to Noah's, she hands her daughter the bundle of 365 letters that Noah had written to her. When alone, Noah asks Allie what she is going to do; Allie is confused and confesses that she doesn't know. Noah asks her to just stay with him, admitting it is going to be really hard, but he is willing to go through anything because he wants to be with her. Confused as ever, Allie drives off. Allie drives to the hotel and confesses to Lon, who is angry but admits that he still loves her. He tells her that he does not want to convince his fiancée that she should be with him, but Allie tells him he does not have to, because she already knows she should be with him. The film goes back to the elderly couple, and Duke asks Allie whom she chose. She soon realizes the answer herself; young Allie appears at Noah's doorstep, having left Lon at the hotel and chosen Noah. They embrace in reunion. Elderly Allie suddenly remembers her past before she and Noah/Duke joyfully spend a brief intimate moment together; after originally finding out about her illness, she had herself written their story in the notebook with the instructions for Noah to "Read this to me, and I'll come back to you." But soon Allie relapses, losing her memories of Noah yet again. She panics, and has to be sedated by the attending physician. This proves to be too difficult for Noah to watch and he breaks down. The next morning, Noah is found unconscious in bed and he is rushed to the hospital; he later returns to the nursing home's intensive care ward. He goes to Allie's room later that night, and Allie remembers again. The next morning, a nurse finds them in bed together, having both died peacefully holding each other's hands. The last scene shows a flock of birds flying away.

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Notebook Movie Review: Salman Khan's production NOTEBOOK starring Pranutan Bahl and Zaheer Iqbal boasts of exemplary performances by the debutants and is beautifully shot while stressing on the importance of education.

Notebook review 3.0/5 & rating. watch notebook official trailer video, listen songs, movie news updates, movie review and checkout public movie reviews soon., notebook review {3.0/5} & review rating.

In the age of electronic media and social messaging apps, the charm of handwritten letters and note is even more special. At such a time, Salman Khan presents NOTEBOOK. Although it is based in time period of the last decade, it is not exactly a period film and talks about some of the relatable issues of Kashmir, and also of the matters of the heart. So does NOTEBOOK manage to entertain and touch a chord among the viewers? Or does it fail to do so? Let’s analyse.

NOTEBOOK is the story of the bond that develops between two lonely teachers without even meeting each other. Kabir (Zaheer Iqbal) is based in Jammu and has quit the Army following a traumatic incident. He is called to Srinagar by an acquaintance who recommends him to join a school started by his father in Wular. The school’s only teacher Firdous (Pranutan Bahl) has quit the school just some time back. With no other teacher there, Kabir agrees to join. Wular is located in a remote town and the school is built in a rundown houseboat. There are only a handful of students around and Kabir starts teaching them. In the drawer in the teacher’s desk, he finds a notebook written by Firdous. She has written her thoughts, fears, insecurities, strengths etc. while she was teaching in Wular. It helps motivate Kabir and he also falls for her. Also, the manner in which the students speak highly of her makes it clear that she’s a kind-hearted person. Firdous also mentions in her diary that she is having an on-off relationship with a man called Junaid. Moreover, one day the school is hit by a storm during which Firdous’s notebook falls in the water. Kabir tries to save it but fails. What happens next forms the rest of the film.

NOTEBOOK is the official remake of the 2014 Thai film TEACHER’S DIARY [Directed by Nithiwat Tharatorn; story and screenplay by Nithiwat Tharatorn, Sopana Chowwiwatkul, Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn and Supalerk Ningsanond]. Darab Farooqui’s adapted screenplay comes across as inconsistent. The script had to be watertight in this film keeping in mind the loopholes in the plot. Sharib Hashmi and Payal Ashar’s dialogues are fine and work well within the context of the film.

Nitin Kakkar’s direction is poor, which is shocking considering how well he had executed his previous films, FILMISTAAN [2014] and MITRON [2018]. The first sign is seen in the opening scene itself depicting Kabir suffering from the horrors of his past. However, this bit is shown just once. Ideally, the director should have shown it multiple times that he’s getting flashes of the horrendous episode he suffered when he was in the armed forces. Secondly, an action scene is needlessly forced in the first half and it serves no purpose. NOTEBOOK is a niche, multiplex-type urban film and the masala fight sequence looks so out of place. In fact, this niche appeal is also an issue as audiences might not get exactly the gist of some scenes. Take for instance the scene where Kabir reaches Delhi Public School to find Firdous. It is not clear at this juncture whether he managed to recognize Firdous. If he did, it’s bewildering why he didn’t talk to her. If he didn’t, then why didn’t he ask around in the school about her whereabouts. Lastly, it is laughable to see that Kabir never reads Firdous’s book fully. He’s reading just few pages each time. Note that he’s in a remote town and he has no other means of passing time. Also, he has fallen crazily for this girl. In such a situation, anybody in his place would have read the notebook in one go. But Kabir doesn’t and it’s only a few months later that he realizes that she has also written about her marriage! Due to such silly sequences, the impact goes for a toss.

NOTEBOOK is around two hours long but moves at a snail’s pace. The introduction part is engaging and the manner in which the school is depicted initially is intriguing. One can actually feel that the school is located in the middle of nowhere. Kabir trying to adjust to his new surroundings makes for a fine watch. The sequence of Kabir making friends with the kids is okay as the humour seems forced. The best part of the first half is however when Kabir catches his girlfriend Dolly cheating. The use of the song ‘Accha Sila Diya’ adds to the fun. The intermission point is quite arresting. Post-interval however the film falls. Kabir could have easily met Firdous by making enquiries but the makers don’t allow that to happen. Hence, it seems very unconvincing. Also, the film deals with too many topics like terrorism in Kashmir, exodus of Kashmiri pandits, importance of education for Kashmiri children etc. These tracks however are more interesting than the principle plot and that’s not good news for a film that is essentially a love story. The film ends on a fine note but it’s too little, too late.

NOTEBOOK rests on some fine performances with both the debut actors doing an excellent job. Zaheer Iqbal is quite sincere and genuinely does a good job. Despite his tough look, he plays the vulnerable part very well and comes across as quite endearing. Pranutan Bahl is stunning and has a supreme screen presence. She delivers a first-rate performance and can definitely make a mark in Bollywood, provided she signs some well-written films. From the kids, Mir Mohammed Mehroos (Imran) has an important track and is a natural. Soliha Maqbool (Shama) is most adorable. The others - Mir Mohammed Zayan (Tariq), Baba Hatim (Waqar), Adiba Bhat (Dua) and Hafsa Ashraf Katoo (Iqrah) also put their best foot forward. Mir Sarwar (Iqbal’s father), recently seen in KESARI, is fine. Zahoor Zaidi (Hameed Chacha), Mozim Bhat (Junaid) and Farhana Bhat (Dolly) are decent.

Notebook HONEST Public Review | Salman Khan | Zaheer Iqbal | Pranutan Bahl

Vishal Mishra’s music is melodious. 'Nai Lagda' is the best song of the lot and is also picturized well. 'Bumro' is peppy although it comes up all of a sudden. 'Main Taare' comes next though Salman Khan’s voice doesn’t come across properly at a few places. 'Safar' and 'Laila' are forgettable. Vishal Mishra’s background score is as per the film’s theme.

Manoj Kumar Khatoi’s cinematography is stunning and captures the remote Kashmir locales beautifully. Urvi Ashar Kakkar and Shipra Rawal’s production design is rich. The entire school-in-houseboat bit is fascinating. Sanam Ratansi’s costumes are appealing. Shachindra Vats’s editing could have been tighter.

On the whole, NOTEBOOK boasts of exemplary performances by the debutants and is beautifully shot while stressing on the importance of education. At the box office, the film would appeal only to multiplex audience.

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Junglee Box Office Collections: Vidyut Jammwal’s Junglee hangs on, all eyes on the second weekend; it is curtains for Notebook

Junglee Box Office Collections Day 5: The Vidyut Jammwal starrer Junglee has a decent Tuesday, Notebook stable but on lower side

Junglee Box Office Collection Day 4: The Vidyut Jammwal starrer maintains a fair hold, Notebook is dull

Junglee Box Office Collections Day 3: The Vidyut Jammwal starrer has a fair weekend, Notebook would struggle for Rs. 5 crore lifetime

Junglee Box Office Collections Day 2 The Vidyut Jammwal starrer Junglee is better on Saturday, Notebook continues with poor numbers

Junglee Box Office Collections Day 1: Junglee is fair, Notebook is poor on Friday

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nice script nice direction nice actor wonderful claimax super super super maind loving music wow…

agar iss jahan mai jannat kahi hai to yahi hai haminastu. kashmir is gorgeous. bhai does a superb…

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Telling of 13-year-old twin boys ( László Gyémánt and András Gyémánt ) who endure the harsh punishments of World War II’s final stretch in rural Hungary, János Szász ’s " The Notebook " is a well-crafted but otherwise undistinguished and tedious entry in a long line of European films that make a grotesque show of war’s horrors, often viewed through the lens of childhood’s disabused innocence. Such films, whatever their quality, so often end up in U.S. art houses and the Oscars’ Best Foreign Film sweepstakes, it’s tempting to suspect there’s a single factory stamping them out according to formula. The most novel thing about "The Notebook" (not to be confused with the Ryan Gosling vehicle of the same title) is how lumpy, labored and relentlessly episodic its narrative is. If one went into it knowing nothing of its origins, the film’s lack of dramatic structure might suggest a singularly inept screenwriting exercise that somehow made it into production. In fact, it’s close to impossible to imagine this movie being made had it been based on an original screenplay rather than a well-regarded novel, "Le Grand Cahier," by Agota Kristof , a Hungarian who writes in French. Published in 1986 and obviously descended from " The Tin Drum ," "The Painted Bird" and the like, Kristof’s tale (here scripted by her, Szász and András Szekér ) explores the not altogether novel idea of war’s brutalizing effects by focusing not on its military center but the civilian periphery. Once air raids have made city life too perilous, the twins’ mother (Gyöngyvér Bognár) takes them to the countryside and deposits them with their grandmother (Piroska Molnar), an abusive alcoholic known to locals as "the Witch." Granny will make sure that, for the boys, war will be hell on the home front too. With both of their parents having disappeared in different directions, the twins react to their harsh new circumstances with an orgy of purposeful masochism. Deciding they must toughen themselves up to meet the cruelties that are surely coming, they starve themselves and attack their bodies in various ways, including cutting themselves with a knife and pouring alcohol over the wounds. There’s an emotional component to this Spartan regimen too. Seeking to quench all weakness in themselves, the boys read the Bible’s accounts of ancient brutalization and, obeying a command from their father, begin to keep a notebook recording the war’s hardships as unsentimentally as possible. This notebook almost surely is a device more suitable to a novel than a film, where it seems both extraneous and contrived. After establishing the twins’ campaign of self-discipline, which occupies the tale’s initial section, the film’s narrative often feels shambling and aleatory, centered less on the boys’ development than on their encounters with random people who seem like they might have been drawn from a novelists’ database of stock characters, WWII division.

There’s an epicene Nazi officer ( Ulrich Thomsen ) who is of course a pedophile. There’s a neighbor girl with a hairlip ( Orsolya Toth ), who predictably mutates from taunting enemy to fast friend. There’s a friendly Jewish craftsman, a corrupt priest and a pro-Nazi young woman who strips the boys, takes them into her bath and masturbates using their feet—the kind of soft kink that’s all but inevitable in a genre that’s built on various sorts of vicarious prurience. No less standard, there’s a passing invocation of the Holocaust, which takes the form of a scene almost identical to one in last year’s " The Book Thief ," an equally bad but far glossier film: Scores of bedraggled, sad-eyed Jews being shepherded down a village street toward their inescapable doom. One reason all this adds up to so little is that the twins are flat and uninteresting characters to begin with and they don’t grow as the story unfolds. Ditto for Granny and the other secondary characters. Another problem is that certain incidents in the film are downright unbelievable or risible. These range from a grave that is dug in hard ground in what seems like minutes to a claim that a girl who dies from being raped by marauding soldiers "at least died happy." Really? Finally, an objection about what happens to the brothers at the end of the film, which I won’t reveal except to say it seems to contradict very basic things we’ve been told about them earlier. Coming out of a screening of the film, this reviewer encountered a group of folks complaining that the ending “makes no sense.” One, however, opined that it was perhaps “symbolic,” which would seem to be the case. Kristof’s novel is actually the first volume of a trilogy in which the two subsequent volumes trace the contrasting fates of the brothers in the post-war period. So the gambit, which sets up the story’s next stages, may have a kind of justifiability as a literary conceit. Yet it flies against the fundamental realism of film, where it’s always a sin to sacrifice common-sense believability and character consistency to high-flown rhetorical “symbolism.”

Godfrey Cheshire

Godfrey Cheshire is a film critic, journalist and filmmaker based in New York City. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, Film Comment, The Village Voice, Interview, Cineaste and other publications.

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The Notebook (2014)

Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, nudity and language

112 minutes

András Gyémánt

László Gyémánt

Piroska Molnár as Grandmother

Ulrich Thomsen

Ulrich Matthes

János Szász
Agota Kristof
András Szekér

Director of Photography

Christian Berger

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The Notebook movie review & film summary (2004)
The Notebook. "The Notebook" is based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks and directed by Nick Cassavetes. 'The Notebook" cuts between the same couple at two seasons in their lives. We see them in the urgency of young romance, and then we see them as old people, she disappearing into the shadows of Alzheimer's, he steadfast in his love.
The Notebook
Movie Info. In 1940s South Carolina, mill worker Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) and rich girl Allie (Rachel McAdams) are desperately in love. But her parents don't approve. When Noah goes off to ...
The Notebook (2004)
Sort by: Filter by Rating: 10/10. Unabashedly Romantic and Sentimental. It's Storytelling at its Best. chron 26 February 2005. This story plays out as Duke, played by James Garner, reads a story about two young people in the 1940s who fall in love and endure life. The movie moves between present-day and the 1940s.
FILM REVIEW; When Love Is Madness And Life a Straitjacket
The Notebook. Directed by Nick Cassavetes. Drama, Romance. PG-13. 2h 3m. By Stephen Holden. June 25, 2004. Young love -- the old-fashioned kind that flourished before the age of the hook-up -- has ...
The Notebook Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 30 ): Kids say ( 106 ): In THE NOTEBOOK, the details and dialog are a bit clumsy, but in the end romantics won't care. Also, it's hard to believe in Allie's feelings for Noah or Lon, partly because none of them ever come alive as characters. It's all description, not depiction.
The Notebook
The Notebook is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, from a screenplay by Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi, and based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks.The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall in love in the 1940s. Their story is read from a notebook in the present day by an elderly man, telling the tale to a fellow ...
The Notebook (2004)
The Notebook: Directed by Nick Cassavetes. With Tim Ivey, Gena Rowlands, Starletta DuPois, James Garner. An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes.
The Notebook
The Notebook is the kind of syrupy, heightened melodrama more likely to be found in the pages of a Mills & Boon paperback than on the silver screen. Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 2 ...
The Notebook
A stirring romance film between a creepy stalker and an emotional mess, The Notebook is a film that needs no introduction. Everybody knows about The Notebook and a review will hardly convince you to change your stance. Personally, it was just fine. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams lack chemistry whatsoever and their section is entirely typical.
The Notebook (2004)
The Notebook (2004) - Movies, TV, Celebs, and more... Menu. Movies. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. ... Metacritic reviews. The Notebook. 53. Metascore. 34 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com. 80.
The Notebook
On the night of the couple's breakup, Noah overhears Allie's mother calling him "trash, trash, trash!". Mrs. Hamilton's deception of hiding Noah's letters from Allie succeeds in keeping the couple apart for years, but at the cost of a strained mother-daughter relationship.
The Notebook: 7+ Thoughts I Had While Rewatching The Ryan ...
The Notebook Breakup Scene Is One of The Best In History. Thankfully, The Notebook isn't one of the great breakup movies, because that would totally ruin the vibe of the film. However, the film ...
Movie Review: 'The Notebook'
The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "The Notebook: (Le Grand Cahier)."
The Notebook
The Notebook. Cert 12A. Peter Bradshaw. Friday 25 June 2004. The Guardian. Dentistry in the Renaissance could not have been more painful than watching this. It's a grisly Titanic knockoff based on ...
My favourite film aged 12: The Notebook
For those who haven't seen it, The Notebook follows 17-year-old Allie (McAdams) as she moves to a small South Carolina town for the summer and meets Noah (Gosling), a construction worker fond of ...
"The Notebook": Movie Review and Analysis
This movie is directed toward teenagers and adults as I would recommend it to all of my peers, though it may be too mature for younger audiences. The Notebook is rated PG-13 due to sexual content. I personally love the movie The Notebook's passionate romance between the two young lovers. I would 10/10 rate this movie 5 stars.
Notebook Movie Review
Notebook Movie Review: Critics Rating: 3.0 stars, click to give your rating/review,The highlights of 'Notebook' are the cinematography by Manoj Kumar Khatoi and the performances by Za
Notebook Movie Review: It Will Bind Your Emotions Together!
Notebook Movie Review Rating: 3/5 Stars (Three stars) Star Cast: Zaheer Iqbal, Pranutan Bahl, Mir Mohammed Mehroos, Mir Mohammed Zayan, Mozim Bhat. Director: Nitin Kakkar. Notebook Movie Review ...
Notebook movie review: Salman Khan backs a winning tale of two
Language: Hindi with Kashmiri. Sometimes sweet simplicity is all it takes. Director Nitin Kakkar's Notebook is set largely on a pristine lake in Jammu and Kashmir where an ex-Armyman gives a new career a shot, taking to teaching Kashmiri kids in a remote island school. Kabir is battling his own demons while coping with the unique challenges of the new job when he comes across a diary written ...
The Notebook (2004)
The movie focuses on an old man reading a story to an old woman in a nursing home. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who meet one evening at a carnival. But they are separated by Allie's parents who disapprove of Noah's unwealthy family, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her ...
Notebook Movie Review: Rough-On-The-Edges Zaheer Iqbal And Pranutan
Notebook Movie Review: Pranutan, granddaughter of one of the finest actresses that Hindi cinema has ever produced, isn't a finished article. Entertainment Saibal Chatterjee Updated: March 29, 2019 ...
Notebook Movie Review: Salman Khan's production NOTEBOOK starring
Notebook Movie Review 2019 : Notebook Critics Rating 3.0/5. In the age of electronic media and social messaging apps, the charm of handwritten letters and note is even more special. At such a time ...
The Notebook movie review & film summary (2014)
This notebook almost surely is a device more suitable to a novel than a film, where it seems both extraneous and contrived. After establishing the twins' campaign of self-discipline, which occupies the tale's initial section, the film's narrative often feels shambling and aleatory, centered less on the boys' development than on their ...

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The Notebook

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"The Notebook": Movie Review and Analysis

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