movie review

[bosun]

The following sentences are from the movie review ' The notebook' and ther are some parts I cannot understand the meaning exactly( THe red parts) Can you please explain them in other words?

1. Directed by Nick and graced with an attractive and talented cast, it has become the romance of the summer.

2. It is such a cliche-ridden, and emotionally manipulative misadventure in film-making.

3. The Notebook is two different flims in one and therein lie both its appeal and its chief problem. ( what is the underlying meaning of this sentence? I am very confused)

4. In a pastiche of every romantic movie ever made, she quicly falls the charms of raggedly handsome man who hails from the wrong side of the tracks.

[BobK]

The following sentences are from the movie review ' The notebook' and ther are some parts I cannot understand the meaning exactly( THe red parts) Can you please explain them in other words?

1. Directed by Nick and graced with an attractive and talented cast, it has become the romance of the summer.
If something is "graced with" someone's presence, it benefits from it. It's often marks sarcasm: A teacher might say to a late schoolboy 'I was wondering when you'd grace us with your presence'. In the context of the review, I think the word is badly chosen.

2. It is such a cliche-ridden, and emotionally manipulative misadventure in film-making.
Oh dear; is it worth unpicking this horrid sentence? Ah well: a "misadventure" is something that shouldn't have happened; the word exists primarily in the phrase 'death by misadventure'. If a film is "emotionally manipulative" it tries to make the audience feel a certain way. Look up 'cliche' in a dictionary. The suffix '-ridden' can be added to a noun to make the noun suffer from the word it's attached to: something that's "cliche-ridden" suffers from being full of cliches.

3. The Notebook is two different flims in one and therein lie both its appeal and its chief problem. ( what is the underlying meaning of this sentence? I am very confused)

I don't know the film, but let's say it's a tragi-comedy (both a tragedy and a comedy - two films in one). This makes the film interesting, but it also makes it unsatisfying - it's not really either. The phrase 'therein lie' means '[they - the appeal and the problem]lie in that fact'; -"and that is the reason for the film's appeal - and at the same time it's chief problem'.
4. In a pastiche of every romantic movie ever made, she quicly falls the charms of raggedly handsome man who hails from the wrong side of the tracks.
A "pastiche" is a piece of art that sticks together (paste) lots of bits from other works.

'hails from the wrong side of the tracks' - lives or originates from. Are you sure it's 'raggedly'? People in romantic comedies are usually ruggedly handsome. To say that he 'hails from the wrong side of the tracks' is to say that he had an unfashioinabe and/or poor or deprived background.

At the risk of being told that it was written by Graham Greene or someone, I'd say it's not a very good piece of writing.

b