The Notebook

I had a very favorable memory of the Notebook going into rewatching this film for the first time, but I found it impossible not to draw parallels between it and La La Land outside of Ryan Gosling being the romantic male lead (a brief relationship becomes a life long passion, the woman pursues her dreams while Goslings character's dream remains at home, the woman then finds a more suitable - on paper husband just in the notebooks take, she leaves safety for passion). The Notebook is a beautiful love story overall, but the film itself has a lot of lulls. Outside of the extravagant shows of affection from Goslings character and a few quotable lines, there's not much here that stands out. The best moment of the entire film is hands down when his wife snaps out of her dementia for a few moments, and they are allowed to spend a few moments together again. That was beautiful. Them dying together didn't hit as hard, but was still a cute way to wrap their story up, death freed them from the torment they each faced. The Notebook is a good movie, and a good romantic tale, it just doesn't feel like it does quite enough to be great. It may have benefitted from a shorter run time in my opinion as a found quite a few scenes to serve little to no purpose in the grand scheme of things.