My name is Betty Jo, and I’m an incurable romantic. I get my regular fixes from movies like An Affair to Remember, Sleepless in Seattle and Return to Me. Under the pseudonym Elizabeth Lawrence, I’ve even co-written (with my husband) a little romantic memoir titled It Had To Be Us. So it’s no surprise I was first in line at the Sneak Preview of The Notebook, a love story adapted from Nicholas Sparks’ bestseller of the same name.

When I interviewed Sparks in 1999 about the film version of Message in a Bottle, another one of his books, he also spoke about The Notebook with a great deal of enthusiasm. “It’s based on the tender love story of my wife’s grandparents,” he said. “And it’s being made into a movie, too.” From that moment on, I was eager to see this “tender love story” on film. Perhaps my high expectations are responsible for the disappointment I now feel.

Although the movie’s theme of long-lasting true love is admirable, many details of this story reach way beyond reason. I’m not saying certain things didn’t really happen the way they’re depicted here, just that they don’t come across as believable. Teenagers lying in the street until a car almost runs over them? A boy persuading a girl to go out with him while he’s hanging by one arm high atop a ferris wheel? A soldier in a head-and-body cast making a date with a nurse when he can barely see or move? A guest at a dinner party being asked, in front of everyone, how much money he makes at his job? And so forth.

Fortunately, the film has an appealing narrator to soften  jarring elements like those mentioned above. James Garner (Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood ) uses his soothing voice as a gentle man who reads daily to a lovely woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease (Gena Rowlands). It’s always the same tale about a girl (Rachel McAdams) from a wealthy family and a poor farmer’s son (Ryan Gosling) who fall in love during the 1940s only to be parted through circumstances beyond their control. When they meet again years later, the girl must choose between her first love and the man she’s promised to marry (James Marsden).    

Not long into this lushly photographed film, it becomes clear that the character played by Rowlands is the young girl in the story, but there’s still some suspense about whether Garner is the first boy she fell in love with or the one she was later engaged to. Did director Nick Cassavetes (John Q) deliberately cast one of the young actors because he looks like Garner? If so, he put him in the wrong role -- or maybe the right one if he wanted to confuse viewers. Sorry, but I don’t appreciate those kinds of tricks.

I also had problems with other casting decisions here. Although “exuberant” best describes McAdams’ (Mean Girls) performance, she giggles and shouts a bit too much, and Gosling seems better suited for darker roles like the one he played in Murder by Numbers. Chemistry between these two attractive actors emerges only during their characters’ reunion phase, but by that time I felt little sympathy for either of them. Not a good sign -- an incurable romantic like me needs to care about the lovers in order to enjoy their story.

On the other hand, old pros Garner and Rowlands make their part of the film, sad as it is, work for me. And, while watching them, I thought about Nicholas Sparks’ advice concerning Message in a Bottle. “Bring tissues,” he said. That goes double for The Notebook.         

(Released by New Line Cinema and rated “PG-13” for some sexuality. Reviewed after the Sneak Preview of June 12, 2004.)