(Note: The following contains many, many spoilers for The Notebook. In fact, it's pretty much nothing but one big spoiler. So don't say I didn't warn you.)

On a cold winter evening this week, my husband Patrick built a fire in the fireplace, poured us each a glass of wine, and settled next to me on the couch to watch a movie. It should have been romantic. In fact, if we were preparing to watch a good movie, it might have been. But no -- we were set to watch The Notebook.

"Hey, a lot of people really love this movie," I told him. He cast a gimlet eye on the book-sized DVD box containing the new "Limited Edition Gift Set," and sighed. Whenever I start making excuses for a film before it's even removed from the case, he knows he's in trouble.

We waded through all of the envelopes and gee-gaws enclosed therein (more on those later) and slipped in the disc. As the ratings screen splashed across the TV, I noted that it's rated PG-13 for "some sensuality."

"Do they use the F-word at any point?" Patrick asked. I guessed that they probably wouldn't, because The Notebook takes place in the past, back before people swore.

"Oh yeah," he replied. "Like my grandparents never dropped the F-bomb."

The framework of the film -- based on the book by weepy romance novelist and Shakespeare write-alike Nicholas Sparks -- involves an aging James Garner reading a book to his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife, played by Gena Rowlands. They're living in an assisted care facility, even though Garner could go home any time he wants. He's convinced that if he keeps reading this book to his wife, she'll snap out of her dementia. or something, so he stays and ... reads.

The story he reads her is about two teenagers, Noah and Allie, who meet in 1940 at an amusement park. Noah (Ryan Gosling, who is made to look all old-timey by the addition of a goofy cap) is immediately smitten, which we can tell because Allie (Rachel McAdams) is shown is slow motion, even though she's on the bumper cars. Later, Noah gets her to agree to go on a date by hanging off the Ferris wheel by one hand, because nothing wins a girl's heart faster than showing that you're suicidal.

Allie's family is rich, so she receives a high-falutin' version of home schooling, and after a movie date she tells Noah about her typical day: "I get up in the morning, breakfast, math tutor, Latin tutor, lunch, tennis lessons, dance lessons -- sometimes both -- French tutor, piano lesson, then I eat dinner..."

"She's Batman's daughter!" Patrick exclaimed. "She also has daily lessons in shooting, martial arts, and forensics." The rest of the date involves the two of them lying in the middle of the street to look at the traffic light, and then dancing as the song "I'll Be Seeing You" plays, which makes it feel like it ought to be the end of the movie, except there's an hour and 45 minutes left to go.

Noah and Allie's love affair is shown primarily through montages which involve them riding bikes, stripping down to go swimming, eating ice cream, stripping down to go swimming again, making out in Noah's car, and stripping down to go swimming. Allie meets Noah's dad, played by Sam Shepard, and he makes them pancakes at 10:00 at night. This is because working class people can eat breakfast whenever they want, unlike Allie's snooty rich family who probably insist on normal meal times. Already the class difference is apparent! Occasionally, Garner's voiceover returns to remind us that, oh yeah, he's reading this story to Gena Rowlands. Maybe the brains of Alzheimer's patients are stimulated by stories about teenagers who like to swim and eat pancakes.

Allie comes home late one night and is met on the porch by a creepy Southern man in a smoking jacket, who has an enormous, fake-looking mustache. She calls him "Daddy," so we can only assume that this is her father, unless this movie's about to take a really interesting turn.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Is this movie set in the South? Because this is the first character who has an accent." Patrick shrugged, pretending that he hadn't really been thumbing through a comic book instead of paying attention to the movie.

Allie's mother (Joan Allen) gives Noah the third-degree about his intentions, telling him that Allie has a bright future, and will attend Sarah Lawrence in the fall ("That's in New York," she adds helpfully, in case the audience doesn't know where Sarah Lawrence is located). Noah responds by taking Allie to an abandoned, run-down old plantation house, where more feverish making out ensues.

"That's pretty romantic," Patrick observed. "If you ignore all the rats, fleas and vagrants." Indeed, this is one pretty nasty-looking old Gothic hellhole, and for a moment we hold out hope that Allie and Noah will be killed by zombies or a ax-wielding hillbilly mongoloid, but again ... that would be far too interesting for The Notebook.

After rolling around on the dirty floor for awhile, Noah tells Allie that he intends to one day buy the plantation and restore it to its former glory. To her credit, Allie doesn't snicker. We are then treated to another montage of swimming, dancing, and making out.

"How do they have all this time to strip down to their bathing suits and snog all night when he's supposed to be working full time at some lumber yard?" Patrick asked. "Not that we ever see him working."

"Days were longer in 1940," I said.

Patrick shook his head. "No, they just seemed like it, because they didn't have cable television or Xbox 360s."

This time, the making out leads to an inconclusive sexual encounter, which then leads to Noah and Allie getting home even later than usual, which then leads to more lectures from Joan Allen and Creepy Mustache Dad. Afterwards, Noah and Allie fight, during which Allie yells, "It's ovah! OVAH!" this marking the first (and only) time in the movie that Rachel McAdams attempts an accent.

James Garner's voiceover returns ("I totally forgot about him!" I said), and there's a bunch of stuff about Noah writing letters but never getting a response, then he goes into the army. Noah's best friend dies in the war, which is allotted about five seconds of screen time. Then Noah gets out of the army, starts sleeping with a hot war widow, and his dad dies, which gets mentioned briefly in passing. Thanks, movie. Thanks for introducing characters and then tossing them aside like used Kleenex.

"I'm starting to think this Nicholas Sparks is something of a hack," Patrick said.

While in college, Allie volunteers part-time as a nurse's aide, and one of her patients is hunky-handsome James Marsden. ("It's Cyclops from X-Men!" I shouted gleefully. Patrick yelled, "Whatever you do, don't look in his eyes!") He heals up from his injuries in record time, shows up at Sarah Lawrence in a flashy uniform, and convinces Allie to marry him.

Meanwhile, back in the South somewhere, Noah -- now with shaggy hair and a crazy-loner beard -- buys and fixes up the plantation. Allie comes to visit him, and they finally have hot, hot sex.

At this point, it's obvious that Allie and Noah are the younger James Garner and Gena Rowlands, but Patrick points out that there's absolutely no way that Ryan Gosling will age to look anything like James Garner. We consider the idea that, perhaps, the casting of Cyclops was intended as a red herring because he's much more likely to look like James Garner when he's 70, but dismiss it as being far too clever for this movie.

Having finally engaged in torrid restored-plantation sex, Crazy Beard Noah celebrates by taking Allie out on a boat into the middle of a bayou that's swarming with about 5,000 geese. Or maybe they're swans. Honestly, when there are that many birds in one place, they just seem like feathered vermin. But whatever they are, it's supposed to be romantic.

"Dear lord, can you imagine what that would smell like?" Patrick asked, horrified. "It's a swamp full of goose crap!"

After the boat ride, Noah breaks it off with the Hot War Widow, but she likes Allie and they all have iced tea together, which seems like some serious revisionist history on James Garner's part. In actuality, there was probably a lot more bitchiness to that encounter, but he probably figures that since Gena Rowlands has Alzheimer's, he can just pretend that everyone parted friends and she'll never know the difference. The next morning, we see Allie painting in a sun-drenched studio that Noah apparently stocked full of art supplies on the off chance that she'd come visit some day, have sex with him, and then decide to paint. Which isn't creepy and stalkerish at all, is it?

After some tedious back and forth between Allie and Noah and Cyclops about who she loves more, we're brought back to present day, where Gena Rowlands finally remembers the past for about 30 seconds before devolving into a screaming fit of dementia. We now know that she chose Noah over Cyclops, which means that it's time for James Garner to have a heart attack. He's taken away to a different part of the hospital until he gets better, then he returns to Gena Rowlands, crawls into bed with her, and they both die.

"So the romantic message here is that you live, you love, you grow old, and then you die surrounded by strangers, screaming incoherently and crapping your pants," Patrick said.

"I can see why so many women have embraced this as a beautiful love story," I said. "It's so ... hopeful."

Patrick nodded. "I think they must just like the geese."

But wait! There's more! The brand new "Limited Edition Gift Set" of The Notebook offers precisely the same DVD transfer and extras as the previous release of the film, except that it includes a spiral photo album with pictures of Gosling and McAdams, plus stickers and accoutrements to add your own photos (yes, it's a DVD set aimed at scrapbookers!) plus some themed note cards with matching envelopes, and a couple of bookmarks. If you find this sort of thing adorable ... well, then this is the sort of thing that you'll like. Everyone else may want to check their gag reflex at the door.

Dawn Taylor believes in love, but she's terrified of geese.

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