Our leads are at least well-portrayed enough to come off as layered and meaty, but when it's all said and done, there is only so much depth in this film, and I don't know if it's because of the superficiality in Sparks' story concept or because something got lost in translation when Sparks' story was brought to the screen, but either way, the point is that histrionics can be fought back only so much. There have been more histrionic interpretations of Sparks' questionable dramatic efforts, but when this film's genuineness slips, its subtlety lapses range from offputting to considerable, whether when it's slapping down a rather disconcertingly syrupy dramatic beat or going so far as to craft such borderline over-the-top characters as wealthy, disapproving parents antagonists, whose layers feel a particularly forced, yet are not the only questionable components to characterization depth. The film will run a steady pace, only to suddenly jar things along, and while you're never quite jarred loose from the film, events are often awkwardly tossed at you, and such a formula proves to be detrimental to the momentum of substance's impact, whose blows are further softened by yet another hallmark in Nick Sparks stories: subtlety issues.

Sarcasm aside, the audience is right in saying that Nick Sparks actually did something good before doing about 100 mediocre things, though you shouldn't completely disregard the critics, as their complaints are hardly completely invalid.Īt just over two hours, the film is somewhat lengthy, and is certainly pretty meaty, yet its concept, in a lot of areas, holds too much meat to fully juice in two hours, as reflected by story structure's pacing's being, like the pacing of plenty of other Nicholas Sparks novel adaptations, uneven, having enough meditative points to compel thoroughly, but still taking advantage of its main story's being framed to all too often only hit highlights in exposition in a storybook, objective fashion that distances you from substance a bit, and thins out meditative value. I mean, don't get me wrong, Gosling broke out eventually, but come on, it still took a while even after this film, though that might just be because of the mixed reviews, because, as you all know very well, the members of the pop culture who decide who becomes popular or not always listen to critics. I can think of some people who would say that they were more disturbed by 'The Hot Chick' than anything that Gosling did before this film, so I guess the match works, yet Gosling still didn't immediately find his handsome, charismatic and talented self fired into the stardom that McAdams got by this film, probably because Gosling still had the integrity and, well, after this film, money to go back to doing stuff that middle-aged housewives aren't likely to even hear about. in two separate films, so it was about time for him to do something a bit fluffier, much like Rachel McAdams, who just had to have been an emotional wreck after getting off of such intense projects as 'The Hot Chick' and 'Mean Girls'. Hey, when this film came out, Ryan Gosling had just got done playing a Neo-Nazi and some teenager who brutally murdered people. Hey, I can't say that I went into this film thinking, 'From the director of 'John Q' comes an adaptation of a book by the author of 'A Walk to Remember' that I'm sure will not stink', nor did I walk away finding it awesome, but make no mistake, this film is better than they say, even though it does have its cheesy moments. Hey, whatever, I welcome it, because this film is actually pretty good, and we seriously need compensation for 'A Walk to Remember', not just between 20, but still to this day, yet that didn't stop the critics from having some kind of bias that kept them from liking this. By 2004, they had, like, twelve adaptations of Nicholas Sparks books, and it took them this long to get around to adapting his first one.

The notebook