The Notebook (2004)

If you're the sort who enjoys shedding such in darkened theaters, your must-see summer movie has arrived.

May be corny, but it's also absorbing, sweet and powerfully acted. It's a film about falling in love and looking back on it, and it avoids many of the genre's syrupy dangers.

Sadly, the elements that made the book special did not survive the transition to the screen.

A determined and often affecting romance that doesn't speak down to audiences.

Amid the sticky-sweet swamp of Jeremy Leven's script, Rowlands and Garner emerge spotless and beatific, lending a magnanimous credibility to their scenes together. These two old pros slice cleanly through the thicket of sap-weeping dialogue and contrivance, locating the terror and desolation wrought by the cruel betrayals of a failing mind.