Released 20 years ago, The Notebook turned Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams into major stars, joined a mini-franchise of other films based on books by Nicholas Sparks, and set a new high bar for tear-jerking romantic dramas. If you love The Notebook—whether for its swoon-worthy sense of yearning or its love-triumphs-over-all ending—here are 25 more movies that will hit you right in the feels.
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The original page-to-screen romantic blockbuster, this slightly cornball but undeniably romantic drama is about the love affair between a rich business scion (Ryan O’Neal) and a working-class girl (Ali MacGraw). It first became a massive blockbuster and later an indelible pop culture touchstone.
Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford weren’t exactly up-and-coming (the former had already won an Oscar) when they made this romantic drama. The film follows a love affair that spans a cultural divide and the course of a decade.
Streisand plays Katie, an anti-war Marxist college student in 1937 New York who falls for a playboy who isn’t bothered by political ideas. Years later—after he’s done a tour of duty in World War II—they reunite, but their career ambitions and differing dreams threaten to pull them apart. The bittersweet ending is an all-timer.
Somewhere in Time has all the essentials to make it a top-tier comp for The Notebook—a rich period setting, a romance that hinges on a class divide, a charismatic pair of would-be lovers in Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. As a bonus, it also has a clever sci-fi time travel conceit. A box office flop upon release, it soon became a cult classic, inspiring tourism to the picturesque car-free setting of Michigan’s Mackinac Island.
A good teen rom-com is already about creating that feeling of yearning, and Say Anything…—the debut film of future Oscar-winner Cameron Crowe—does it far better than most. Like The Notebook, it’s a story of love across the class divide. John Cusack plays Lloyd Dobler, a somewhat aimless Army brat who is in love with Diane (Ione Skye), who excelled in school under the eye of her overprotective father. The great soundtrack pushes it over the top.
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The Notebook resonates because its decades-spanning storyline makes it easy to get invested in its central romance. When Harry Met Sally…—a Rob Reiner-directed classic written by Nora Ephron, pulls off a similar trick in the guise of a bubbly, witty romantic comedy. Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan play the title duo, who progress from enemies to friends, to lovers to maybe something more over the course of more than 10 years. It’s one of the most rewatchable, quotable movies ever made.
If you watch The Notebook to weep over unrequited love, well, love doesn’t get more unrequited than one of the lovers being dead. Ghost was a massive hit and an Oscar nominee—and 34 years later, it plays as a slightly hokey blend of a fantasy thriller and melodrama. Regardless, it’s impossible to deny the chemistry between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze (Exhibit A: that iconic scene at the pottery wheel.)
The first movie to be adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, this high-concept romance served as something of a comeback vehicle for Kevin Costner (post-The Postman, which had flopped upon release in 1997).
Costner stars opposite Robin Wright, who plays newspaper reporter Theresa. While jogging on the beach, Theresa discovers a mysterious love letter floating in the sea and decides to track down whoever wrote it. I bet you can see where this is going.
Released smack in between Message in a Bottle and The Notebook, this one is a teen-focused (and appropriately more melodramatic) twist on the latter.
Shane West plays a teen whose future is threatened when he has a run-in with the law. He’s ordered to do some community service, meeting and falling for Jamie (Mandy Moore), the sheltered preacher’s daughter, in the process. Moore also contributed a song to the soundtrack called “Cry,” which you can basically consider marching orders once you learn her character’s tragic secret.
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Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s follow-up to Amélie is a sweeping wartime epic following a young woman, Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), on a journey to find her fiancé and childhood sweetheart, missing in action in France during World War I. While the central mystery of the boy’s fate unfolds via flashbacks to the battle, Mathilde’s tireless belief that she’ll find her one true love, no matter the obstacles she faces, drives the story.
It might seem like a stretch to compare this top-tier adaptation of the Jane Austen masterpiece to a Nicholas Sparks weepie. Yet there’s no denying that Austen is the godmother of the modern-day rom-com, and this timeless romance touches on many of the same themes—from class consciousness to unrequited yearning—that make The Notebook feel similarly timeless.
Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock star as two strangers living in the same lake house two years apart who fall in love through a series of time-defying letters. As they strive to unravel the mystery of their extraordinary connection, their bond grows, and they work to meet in the same timeline.
If The Notebook’s book-ending scenes of James Garner and Gena Rowlands as the elderly versions of Gosling and McAdams got to you, this mature romance pushes many of the same buttons. Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent play Fiona and Grant, a longtime married couple adjusting to Fiona’s worsening symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a bittersweet reminder that love can’t overcome every obstacle, but it can carry you through a difficult situation.
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Based on the novel by Cecelia Ahern, this love story ticks all the boxes. It’s a romance touched by tragedy, medical melodrama, and a story about the transcendent power of love to change lives.
Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler play Holly and Gerry, a Manhattan couple whose life together is cut short when he dies of a brain tumor. On Holly’s 30th birthday, she receives the first in a series of letters he wrote to her before his death, setting off a literal quest for some degree of closure. It’s a bit contrived but undeniably effective.
This magical realist epic is about a child who ages backward (played at every age—even as an infant—by a motion-captured Brad Pitt) and the complications his condition poses for his lifelong dream of a relationship with his childhood crush (played as an adult by Cate Blanchett).
Similar to The Notebook, it offers a period setting, a seemingly impossible romance, and an ending guaranteed to make you weep.
While The Notebook is mostly remembered for the chemistry between Gosling and McAdams, the sequences set decades later carry the real emotional weight. If you’re looking for another mature love story, seek out this under-the-radar 2008 drama. It follows a growing attraction between the elderly Robert (Martin Landau) and his neighbor Mary (Ellen Burstyn)—a romance that turns out to hold a deeper mystery within it.
This mostly successful adaptation of the beloved novel by Audrey Niffenegger gives a sci-fi spin to another decades-spanning love story and likewise features McAdams in a lead role. Henry (Eric Bana) is a man afflicted by an odd medical condition that causes him to uncontrollably travel through time to different points of his life (while remaining in his adult body). This eventually results in his meeting his future wife (McAdams) during her childhood, which suggests a whole lot of things about fated love and destiny that seems romantic—as long as you don’t think about them too hard.
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In another high-concept romantic drama based on a book (are you sensing a pattern here, too?), Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess play young friends who meet each other on the same day each year across decades. Their lives change a great deal along the way, but they can never shake the idea that they might belong together. Maybe if they ditched the whole “one day a year” thing, they’d figure it out a lot faster—just a thought.
Another Sparks adaptation, this one serves up exactly what you’d expect after learning the premise—Zac Efron plays a U.S. Marine who finds a picture of a young woman (Taylor Schilling) while serving in Iraq and, once back home, decides to track her down. But when he does, he learns they share a tragic connection—and that’s not a bad thing at all, provided your goal is a happy ending and a good cry.
For another story of love triumphing over all obstacles—even science fiction ones—check out this film from the director of Love Actually. The story follows Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), who has inherited his father’s ability to travel through time at will. While it helps him find love at first, Tim doesn’t anticipate what changing the past will mean for his relationship with Mary (McAdams once again).
Yet another Sparks adaptation, this one stars Scott Eastwood (son of Clint) as Luke, a professional bull rider who meets Sophie (Britt Robertson) at an event. During the ride home, they encounter an old man who is carrying a box of letters that hold the secret of a decades-long love story that will end up changing both of their lives. It recreates some of the magic of The Notebook with twin timelines and a clear-eyed story of love enduring despite the hardships of life.
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Based on the first book in Jojo Moyes’ romance series, Me Before You follows small-town Louisa (Emilia Clarke) as she becomes a personal assistant to Will (Sam Claflin), a young man paralyzed after a motorcycle accident. Her bubbly warmth melts his icy demeanor, leading them down an unexpectedly romantic road that takes a turn when Will makes a gut-wrenching decision.
Timothée Chalamet earned an Oscar nomination for his role as Elio in the adaptation of the novel by André Aciman. The novel and film focus on the budding love affair between teenage Elio and an older graduate student, Oliver (Armie Hammer), an assistant to Elio’s professor father. Against the breathtaking backdrop of the Italian countryside, the two slowly fall for one another, even as their age difference and the social strictures of the 1980s setting make their chances for happiness seem fraught.
The present meets the past in this romantic drama starring Issa Rae as the estranged daughter of a famed photographer who falls for the journalist (LaKeith Stanfield) covering her late mother’s life. Interwoven is the doomed love story between her mother (Chanté Adams) and father (Y’lan Noel) in 1989 Louisiana, providing a glimpse at choices and patterns that ripple through generations.
If themes of destiny and fated love resonate with you, this straight-to-Netflix sci-fi romance is worth checking out.
Based on the short story of the same name by Robert Silverberg, the film is set in a future where time travel is possible for the very wealthy, occasionally resulting in life-changing shifts to the timeline. As a result, you can pay to have your memories preserved so you can retrieve them should your history suddenly change. All of this is set up for the love story between Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Janine (Cynthia Erivo), which seems to be inevitable, whatever the timeline.
This heartfelt cross-continental drama explores lost connections, identity, and first love in the story of would-be childhood sweethearts Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), whose burgeoning connection in South Korea is cut short when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada. Reconnecting online and in real life over the decades, they grapple with the echoes of their shared past and the choices that have led them to where they are now.