The Notebook
Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, and the rain-soaked kiss that calcified into a generation's romantic ideal. Critics split; audiences swooned; the 2000s got its definitive sleepover weeper.
The Notebook opened June 25, 2004, Nick Cassavetes' adaptation of Nicholas Sparks's 1996 novel. Cassavetes wanted an unknown, not conventionally handsome Noah, and Ryan Gosling's first reaction to being picked was disbelief: "I thought, 'He's crazy. I couldn't be more wrong for this movie.'" The nationwide search for Allie counted Britney Spears among its finalists before Rachel McAdams won the part. James Garner and Gena Rowlands played the couple in old age, giving the romance its tear-duct-destroying frame.
Critics were unmoved — 54% on Rotten Tomatoes — but audiences handed it an "A" CinemaScore and kept showing up: $118.3 million worldwide on a $29 million budget, the definition of a sleeper hit. The 2005 MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss went to Gosling and McAdams, and the rain-soaked kiss became the single most replayed image of 2000s screen romance.
The Notebook's real life happened after theaters: at sleepovers, after breakups, on worn DVDs passed between friends. It became the movie a generation used to explain what love was supposed to look like — and the reason a whole cohort still can't hear rain without thinking of it.
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