There was a time when the Hollywood tearjerker was a revered movie genre.

Films like Imitation of Life, An Affair to Remember, Love Story and A Summer Place endeared themselves to audiences who wanted a good cry.

These movies were even rated as four and five-hanky movies depending on how tightly they could tug at the heart strings.

The Notebook is a solid four-hanky movie. It's not just unapologetically romantic but unabashedly sentimental.

It doesn't just want you to cry. It demands you do and director Nick Cassavetes knows how to get to those tear ducts.

His greatest tool is Nicholas Sparks' novel on which the film is based.

It's two love stories unfolding simultaneously, but the astute viewer will guess early on it's actually the same love story separated by decades.

An elderly man in a nursing home (James Garner) spends his days reading chapters from a notebook or diary to a woman (Gena Rowlands) in the final stages of dementia.

It's the story of Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling), a handsome, rakish mill worker who falls in love with Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), a wealthy socialite.

The falling in love is great fun because Gosling and McAdams play it primarily for laughs. They're having a good time so the audience has a good time.

Eventually friends, parents, the Second World War, fate and undelivered letters intervene and the lovers are parted.

As Allie's social-climbing mother, Joan Allen plays with icy reserve.

During the war, Allie meets and falls in love with the wealthy, handsome Lon Hammond (James Marsden).

Garner and Rowlands are a charming couple and have a beautiful dancing scene -- their own true Titanic moment that opens the floodgates of emotion.

The Notebook is pure manipulation.

To fight it is foolish.

It's much easier and far more rewarding just to give in and let Cassavetes and his cast play you like a harp.

(This film is rated PG)

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