The Notebook (2004)

True love isn't measured by how it begins, but by how long it lasts. With old-fashioned tearjerkers now something of an endangered species in Hollywood, Nick Cassavetes' "The Notebook" can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy and crowded with clichés, and there's a certain irony in seeing Cassavetes direct a weepie that his late father, John Cassavetes, whose films avoided sentimentality at every turn, might well have scoffed at. Still, this heartfelt, handsome adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' bestselling novel has plenty to recommend it, including an appealing young pair in Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams and a lovely older pair in James Garner and Gena Rowlands, the director's mother. In a nursing home in the present day, an elderly man (Garner) reads a love story from a worn notebook to a woman (Rowlands) whose memory is slipping away. The story takes us back to North Carolina in the summer of 1940, when Noah (Gosling), a poor young mill worker, falls hard for Allie (McAdams), a wealthy vacationing teenager whose disapproving mother (Joan Allen) is determined to keep them apart. You can probably guess the rest. James Marsden co-stars as the charming, well-off suitor who later wins Allie's hand. How their love endured, through war, separation and the passing years, is the story the notebook preserves.