Directed by Nick Cassavetes

Written by Jeremy Leven

Starring Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner

“Behind every great love is a great story,” reads the poster for The Notebook. While this tale of enduring love, set in the 1940s and told mostly in flashback, has pretty photography and four fine lead performances, one thing it does not have is a great, or even faintly good, story. Blame it on the source material, the hugely popular (“on the New York Times best seller list for over 51 weeks!”) but massively cliché-ridden novel by Nicholas Sparks.

Sparks’ old-fashioned yarn, aimed at the Oprah crowd, is yet another opposites-attract love story. Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling, outstanding in the recent The United States of Leland) is a cute, scrappy, blue-collar mill worker who falls hard for Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams, from Mean Girls), a pretty, slightly haughty debutante who’s visiting North Carolina for the summer. Allie’s well-to-do parents are less than thrilled by their interest in one another, but they dismiss it as little more than a summer fling. When it becomes clear the young couple is getting serious, Mrs. Hamilton (a severe Joan Allen) puts an end to their romance by sending Allie away. Noah, who enlists in the service when World War II breaks out, writes his beloved every day for a year, but her mother intercepts all 365 of his letters, making Allie think she has been forgotten. (Strangely, it never occurs to her to get to the mailbox first.)

Years pass. Noah has bought and redecorated his dream house, while Allie has become engaged to Lon, a handsome, wealthy soldier (James Marsden, one of the X-Men) from an upper-crust family. But when Allie sees Noah’s picture in the paper one day, her long-buried feelings are rekindled; she feels compelled to visit her former beau, if only to try and make sense of the abrupt dissolution of their relationship. Who will she choose, Noah or Lon?

If anything makes this trite, thoroughly unoriginal (and overlong) love story bearable, it’s the handsome young Gosling, who continues to impress with his range as an actor. He and McAdams (and co-stars James Garner and Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ real-life mother) aren’t exactly able to make a silk purse out of this cinematic sow’s ear, but they make The Notebook (to explain the title would be to give away a major plot point) as watchable (bearable?) as possible. (Playing citywide)

Directed by Jared Hess

Written by Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess

Starring Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell

Ever hear a joke at a party that had everyone but you in stitches? That was my reaction to Jared Hess’ Napoleon Dynamite, a goofy, poker-faced teen comedy (sort of) about the ultimate high school nerd. Everyone around me was howling, while I scratched my head in bewilderment. I just didn’t get the joke — or, rather, most of them.

Hess, 24, and his wife, Jerusha, based their script on people and events they observed as residents of the small town of Preston, Idaho – “fringe” types similar to those featured in Hess’ comedy short, Peluca (which also starred Jon Heder, a newcomer to acting). Their protagonist, the memorably named Napoleon Dynamite, seems to have stepped out of a time warp. (In fact, the film plays like it is set in the ’80s). With his moon boots, red Afro and tacky Goodwill wardrobe, he’s the perennial loser girls ignore and jocks slam into lockers. He’s so unpopular that he’s forced to play tetherball by himself at recess.

The film is a dry series of vignettes featuring “Nappy D”; his narcissistic uncle Rico (a funny turn by Jon Gries, who also tickled us in The Big Empty); his Mexican classmate, Pedro (Efren Ramirez); his only female friend, Deb (former child star Tina Majorino, from Waterworld, all grown up); and his equally nerdy brother, Kip (Aaron Ruell), who’s romancing a girl named LaFawnduh on the Internet. Some of what goes on inspires the occasional giggle (such as when Napoleon busts a move to a Jamiroquai tune at his class assembly), but just as often you’re waiting for the joke to pay off (or cringing in embarrassment at the flatness of the execution). Perhaps it is the amateurish quality of the performances (save for Gries), or it could be that the deadpan humor (as found in such movies as The Man Without a Past and Kitchen Stories) favored by the Hesses is just not my style. Either way, Napoleon Dynamite did not have me rolling in the aisles. (Hillcrest Cinemas)

**1/2

Directed by Ishiro Honda

Written by Takeo Murata and Ishiro Honda

Starring Takashi Shimura, Momoko Kochi, Akira Takarada

It was supposed to have been a cinematic “event” of sorts: a fully restored Godzilla, with 40 minutes of previously unseen (in the States, at least) footage, new subtitles, and no Raymond Burr (added to the 1954 American release) to take precious screen time away from everybody’s favorite “Monster of Mass Destruction.” But the new, improved Godzilla isn’t nearly as much fun as it was intended to be.

Takeo Murata and director Ishiro Honda’s idea, clearly influenced by King Kong, was to raise a prehistoric creature from the sea, a 30-story behemoth made enormous — and very grouchy — by radioactive fallout it has absorbed from the H-bomb. Naturally, the military wants to destroy Godzilla, but Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura from The Seven Samurai) wants to keep it alive in the name of scientific research. (Presumably he has a lab the size of a football field.) The more bullets, bombs and electrified fences they toss Godzilla’s way, the more of Tokyo he tramples, chews and crushes. The only hope of stopping the rampaging beast appears to be the secret weapon in the possession of the brooding, eye-patch-wearing Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata), a laughable “Oxygen Destroyer” machine. (If Godzilla is liquefied at the bottom of Tokyo Bay, how the hell did he go on to make so many sequels?)

While it still has a certain appeal for those of us weaned on Saturday matinee monster movies, time has not been particularly good to Godzilla. The special effects look particularly cheesy by today’s standards (especially the miniatures and a tacky Godzilla hand-puppet) – you can actually see the folds in Godzilla’s foam latex suit when he walks. (One detail still holds up beautifully: the monster’s signature piercing scream, created by rubbing the strings of a double bass with a leather glove.) Ironically, for all the bragging in the press notes about how this is the “pure” version of Godzilla, the extra footage (mostly involving a boring love triangle) is not only largely uninteresting, it slows down the film’s pace considerably. Who ever thought Raymond Burr would be missed? (Ken Cinema, June 25-July 1)

Rating System

**** a must-see

*** good

** average

* poor

BOMB (think The Day the Fish Came Out)

Kyle Counts is the film critic for the Gay & Lesbian Times