Cinema Reflections: "The Notebook."

I am not our resident cinemaphile; far from it. That honor resides with Knarf. Compared to him and his encyclopedic knowledge of the film world, I am but a trembling, dew-eyed waif of unsurpassed naïveté.

However.

I do enjoy films. Well, I enjoy GOOD films. Pity they have become scarcer than poor gay Muslim African-American Republicans. Even so, bad films can be just as entertaining, albeit for entirely different reasons.

So, while Knarf has more than cornered the market on analysis of so-bad-they're-good exploitation and fringe films over at the tasty Video Updates, I figured I'd tackle a much softer subject today (and in possible subsequent editions of Cinema Reflections which I shall be inspired to concoct provided this one generates sufficient hate-mail). Namely, mainstream, big-budget studio excrement.

So, for your amusement, I figured I'd watch a film that most penis-owners agree is an absolute pile of shit: "The Notebook."

But first, a small caveat:

In the due course of watching certain films, I've noticed a peculiar phenomenon: My preconceived notions of a film going into it often color my final perceptions. The amount of enjoyment I get out of a movie is often affected to some degree by my having heard "things" about it prior to heading into its viewing. For instance, if a film is heavily touted by the popular opinion to be the second coming, a can't-miss, an utterly grand spectacle, my expectations are understandably inflated. At that point, I'm invariably disappointed upon actually viewing the film. Since my expectations have been ramped up to an absurd degree, if the film less than blows me away, I leave it soured.

On the other hand, if I've been told by every critic, friend, and opinion-spouting media orifice that a film is a complete and utter turkey, I may see it for the kitsch value, fully expecting it to be a noisome, squishy lump of doo-doo. Then, if it's nowhere near as bad as everyone says, I leave refreshed, thinking to myself, "Well, THAT was hardly crap at ALL!"

Honestly, I hoped that when it came to this movie, this circumstance would play itself out again. After all...I'd heard it was a pile of tripe. An over-romanticized, ham-fisted, schmaltzy, sickly-sweet potpurri pot of a movie. A film sopping with equal amounts of violins and bathos, and possessed of zero shame. The sort of presentation where they may as well pump fresh-cut onion fumes in through the ventilation ducts. An unapologetic, six-hanky weepie with no redeeming social value.

And I'm happy to report, popular opinion was once again wrong.

It was actually much, much worse than that.

To wit: As the film opens, we're treated to scenes of someone in a rowboat slicing slowly through the peaceful, sunset-reflecting water of a marshy river to the tune of a melancholy piano melody drenched in ersatz reverb, scattering a flock of embarrassingly low-frame-rate CG waterfowl to soar "majestically" across the window of an impossibly stately rest home, where an old woman stands looking out the window sadly.

At that point, my worst fears were confirmed: I knew I was more profoundly and thoroughly fucked than the head cheerleader on prom night.

Why else do you think they call her that?

The old woman (Gena Rowlands), an Alzheimer's patient, is soon joined by an old man (James Garner) carrying a book. Apparently, he's there to read to her. Aww. He introduces himself, and sets about reading a love story. And anyone who can't see where this is going within the first five minutes is so painfully, tragically stupid that they DESERVE this movie. Not to mention an enthusiastic slap in the head.

Most of the film then happens in flashback. The setting is the early, pre-war forties. The stage is set when Noah (Ryan Gosling), a laughably earnest, open-faced lumber-working rube gets it into his sleepy-eyed, sandy-blonde head that he has a chance with Allie (Rachel McAdams), the rich daughter of a local summer-home-owning mucky-muck. He pulls some stupid, "this-crap-only-works-in-bad-movies" stunts to get her attention that naturally make her fall for him. They have an intense, doomed whirlwind summer romance that, of course, ends come September. He promises to write, he writes letters every day for a year, except her Mom hides them because she doesn't approve, so she eventually winds up getting engaged to a sweet-but-bland rich guy, then suddenly she sees a picture in the paper where Noah has restored their "dream house" to the exact specifications they'd fantasized about that magic summer and right about then is when you realize you've had less painful root canals. Even that one where the dentist had to go in rectally.

OH GOD IT'S ALL SO SUB-HALLMARK PSEUDO-ROMANTIC I JUST WANT TO
TEAR MY INTESTINES OUT WITH A GODDAMNED BARBECUE FORK

Point is, everything here is such a banal cliché that anger (rather than the intended sympathy) is the overwhelming emotion as the film tenderly, gently, and condescendingly leads you by the hand to each marshmallow-soft plot point, then still feels the need to point it out to make sure you caught it. I mean, c'mon. There's heavy-handed, and then there's knuckle-dragging. This movie leaves both in the dust.

However, it's not just the plot that's a joke, It fails for several other obvious reasons. The leads are one. Gosling is numbly inoffensive, good-hearted but as bland as a lukewarm bowl of unsweetened cream-of-wheat. James Marsden as new-rich-boyfriend-guy is all he needs to be: Not the other guy. Still, even if he IS used as little more than window dressing and an inconvenient plot point, he comes off as someone I could have a conversation with, and NOT want to stab in the throat.

If you don't want to watch this movie (good instinct), then just stare at this picture for two hours.
Congratulations! You've just wasted the same amount of time, but had an identical experience.
No, wait...On second thought, just the picture is actually way better.

McAdams fares far worse. I have no idea why this vapid twat is allowed to be an actress. Shrill, fickle, flighty, none-too-bright, rude, insipid and openly abusive, not to mention horse-faced, scrawny, and short, one is left with the too-frequently-seen-in-movies question of why two mostly-okay guys are willing to even TOLERATE her in the first place, much less make bids for her affection. She's like Olive Oyl, but without the fashion sense.

And the older couple is no great shakes, either. Garner and Rowlands should have known better. They've both been good and occasionally even great in other projects, but they ought to have read this script and briskly strolled as fast as their legs could carry them in the opposite direction. Yeah, I know that Gena Rowlands is the director's mother. But there comes a point in every kids life where even their own MOM should take them aside and say, "Honey? You know I support you, but I really can't encourage this. You're only humiliating yourself." For me, that moment came both just a bit late, and right on time: AFTER ballet lessons, but before leotard-shopping.

GEE I WONDER IF THERE'S SOME SORT OF CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE
GERIATRIC FARTS AND THE TWENTY-SOMETHINGS IN THE FLASHBACK SEQUENCES
ALSO IF SOMEONE COULD EXPLAIN TO ME AGAIN HOW TO TIE MY SHOES I'M SURE I'LL
TOTALLY GET IT THIS TIME

As if all this wasn't bad enough...In addition to being syrupy, trite, and predictable to the point of absurdity, "The Notebook" has absolutely no idea of how bad it really is. See, every step of the way, it goes to great lengths to assure you that it's taking itself very, very seriously. It thinks it's an important, heartfelt film. And that's sad. Because, after over two hours of "On Golden Pond" meets "50 First Dates" getting roughly sodomized by "Sweet Home Alabama", the only thing that makes "The Notebook" tolerable is laughter. Hearty, enthusiastic laughter.

Whether it's guffawing at the fact that the wardrobe and makeup departments have apparently gone to great lengths to transform the actor playing the girl's father into a doppelgänger of Josef Stalin, or suppressing giggles behind a closed fist over forehead-slappingly obvious plot non-twists that you saw coming twenty minutes hence (but that are nevertheless "revealed" with crescendo string-section swells that hit you over the head with quasi-dramatic "tension")...If you don't laugh, you cry. And not for the reasons the filmmaker intended in EITHER case.

I'm not kidding. It really IS just two hours of this bullshit, and nothing else. Really.

Speaking of the the filmmaker, FURTHER rendering this film unforgivable is the fact that it was directed by Nick Cassavetes. That's Nick, son of John Cassavetes, auteur behind some of the most interesting and edgiest independent pieces of verité ever committed to celluloid. I imagine that, in the wake of this puddle of poo-poo hitting the screen, if one were able to hook some copper coils to the ends of the senior Cassavetes' casket, one could supply power to lower Manhattan for the better part of a month.

When taken in the spirit in which it was intended, "The Notebook" is an absolute mess. A turgid mass of Cinema d'Vagina that's exclusively adored not just by women, but by the sort of women who own multiple cats, have an expense account with Harlequin, and who could give you a detailed breakdown of the last 25 years of character development on "One Life To Live," but could NOT readily identify the President at gunpoint. Women who will never understand what ACTUAL love feels like, if you get me. This film's ONLY redeeming quality is that, having been shot in the verdant South and costumed according to period, it is in certain stretches quite pretty to look at. But other than that, the only people who could derive even the merest scrap of enjoyment out of the tragi-romantic stylings of it are the same sort of poor, deluded souls who actually think "Titanic" DESERVED that fucking Oscar.

That being said, if viewed as a broad, unintentional comedy, which is the only way it even makes sense to try, it's one of the funniest films I've seen in decades.