Movies that your Girlfriend or Wife will make you watch: The Notebook

Oh, what can I say about The Notebook, which is out on DVD?

It's a weeper alright... a weeper on nuclear steroids.

Combine every element of a sad romantic story you can think of, mix it in a mental blender than multiply the result by a googleplex, and the result is the Notebook.

It is the story about two, dare I say star crossed lovers in 1940s South Carolina. The girl in question, Rachel McAdams, comes from a rich family with an interfering mother. Ryan Gosling is, you guessed it, some hunky but really really poor guy who works at a lumber mill. Their story is told through they eyes of James Garner to a fellow patient, played by Gena Rowlands at a hospice in our present day world.

The basic premise of this story is despite everything, the two lovers will always come back to each other. Be prepared to be hit over the head by this repeatedly through the movie.

The Main flaw of this movie is that, well, it is really, really predictable. Feel free to fall asleep at any time and (as long as your significant other does not notice), you can miss half the movie and it still be able to figure out the ending before the movie gets there.

That happened to me... in fact I missed much of the first half of the movie. It did not matter, it took me about a minute of watching to figure out the story and figure out exactly how this was going to end. This movie has absolutely no surprises in it. That will not save you however.

BE PREPARED TO CRY.

I'm serious. You will see the ending a mile away, that will not stop your heart strings from being plucked. The lines will all be platitudes that no one would be able to come up with spontaneously. It still will not matter.

They use pretty much every darn trick in the book story-wise, music-wise, acting-wise and camera-wise. It is really sad, hopeful and rather beautiful. My left side of my brain was in anguish over the sheer predictability of the ending, while my right side of my brain controlled my tear ducts.

Most women will love the romantic ideals of the movie. If you feel like picking a fight with your significant other, you can try pointing out the sheer ridiculousness of how the other woman in Ryan Gosling's life, after finding out that Rachel McAdams has come back to him, just goes "She's the one... isn't she?" and then walks away slightly sombre. I know of no person male or female who would take that sort of thing that well.

In the end though, you (if you have a significant other) will probably be forced to watch this movie. As movies that girlfriends and wives make you go see go it isn't too terrible, other than the simplicity of the story.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is much, much worse.

His Grace.