Old Pros Lend Credibility to Young Lovebirds' Magical Hysteria
Tour  For the birds: Gosling and McAdams photo: New Line
Productions For the birds: Gosling and McAdams  Big-lunged
lovers Allie (Rachel McAdams) and Noah (Ryan Gosling)—pampered
Southern debutante and rough-earth mill worker, respectively—are
on a freedom spree: lying down in the middle of the main drag
late at night; getting aviary without the aid of hallucinogens
("Say I'm a bird!" Allie shrieks at her stud muffin. "Now say
you're a bird too!"); daring their teen romance to conquer time,
distance, class, family meddlings, World War II (which the film
renders as a brief skirmish played out in somebody's backyard),
and some inconvenient significant others picked up like lint
along the way. The minutes of Allie and Noah's magical hysteria
tour are duly recorded in the titular ledger-cum–framing device,
these days in the possession of a kindly codger named Duke
(James Garner). He reads from the notebook to the now elderly
Allie (the director's mom,