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Lovestruck: When Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams got us to overlook ‘toxic love’ in The Notebook

As Noah and Allie, the duo showed all the signs of being in an abusive and toxic relationship, but who cared?

Lovestruck: When Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams got us to overlook ‘toxic love’ in The Notebook
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in a still from the film

Last Updated: 09.42 PM, Feb 15, 2022

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I don’t remember when I saw The Notebook the first time, but it definitely wasn’t when it came out in 2004. I caught it a few years later, when the film came highly recommended as a must-watch and everyone I knew who’d seen it was raving about the lead pair, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams and their incredibly good looks and onscreen chemistry. This was a truly drool-worthy pairing that I, like millions across the globe, quite enjoyed watching. It’s not easy to take one’s eyes off the screen when you have someone like Ryan on it, right?

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The film, an adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel, was and continues to be seen as the epitome of love and is even considered a classic. Trouble is, Noah Calhoun and Alison Hamilton’s love story ain’t all that cute after all. Remember when Noah first meets Alison at the carnival and doesn’t take No for an answer? First, he asks her out for a dance; she refuses. Then he hops on to the ferris wheel, asks her to go out with him again; she refuses yet again. So, what does he do next? He dangles from the ferris wheel and threatens to let go unless she agrees to go out with him. When she eventually says that she will go out with him, he has the gall to respond that he doesn’t want her to do him any favours. It has to be out of her own free will, you see! Creepy!

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in a still from the film
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in a still from the film

It gets worse, and at one point Noah tells her, “Look, I know you hate it when some dirty guy comes up to you on the street, and you don’t know him. You don’t know me, but I know me. And when I see something that I like, I gotta have it. I may go crazy for you. I want you.” Really? And yet Allie proceeds to have a summer of passion with Noah, which was also an inane mix of fight, make out, repeat. If Noah was verbally abusive, Allie was physically abusive in equal measure. They really had nothing going for each other, except hormones perhaps. They were the classic definition of a toxic relationship. But has that stopped millions of people from watching and loving the film. No! Hell, looking back, I still like The Notebook and am more than willing to overlook all these flaws and believe they did what they did because they were ‘crazy about each other’, simply because of how gorgeous those two are onscreen. Sigh! That’s unfortunate, but such is life.

The Notebook is available to stream on Netflix.

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