<p>I have seen the Hey, Girl memes. I first heard of them when Rachel Maddow explained the phenomenon in detail before adding one of her own 
</p>
<p>Well, then I vote you don’t live under a rock! :)</p>
<p>Nicholas Sparks-- horrible books and movies, as a rule. However, The Notebook is sweet and unabashedly romantic. I think it did well because it has great older leads (Garner and the incomparable Gena Rowlands) and two appealing young leads who are actually good actors as well as good eye candy. </p>
<p>I think the over arching problem is that all the movies that we see as a family are action based. Action/Romance (Skyfall, Bourne), Action/Nature (Ghost in the Darkness), Action/History (Gladiator), Action/Comedy (Star Trek - the new version, Sherlock Holmes - new), Action/Drama (Invictus), Action/Fantasy (Lord of the RIngs), Action/Christmas (Die Hard). One can make a similar list with the broad category if Inspirational Sports Movie.</p>
<p>Have you seen Remember the Titans? Gosling is in that!</p>
<p>Ha! no :D</p>
<p>ARGH!!! How have you the football fan not seen this awesome movie???</p>
<p>Sean Astin from Lord of the RIngs is in The Final Season, though</p>
<p>And in Rudy.</p>
<p>"The questioner writes the character names as if they are Lilo and Stitch and only includes the actual movie parenthetically. "</p>
<p>I know what The Notebook is, but I don’t know who Lilo and Stitch are. I’m guessing Disney characters, but it’s been at least a dozen years since my kids were in the Disney stage, and what I did best in animated movies was fall asleep in them. </p>
<p>I have never actually seen the movie Lilo and Stitch either but they are characters who are known by their first names which are unique.</p>
<p>@Youdon’tsay - our family trended towards baseball based inspirational sports movies</p>
<p>Romance, eye candy, baseball all rolled into one it has to be The Rookie, although The Final Season also has a romantic sub plot.</p>
<p>Die Hard is our family’s favorite Christmas movie. My favorite football movie is the very very bad The Replacements. </p>
<p>They’re not known to me, saintfan! :-)</p>
<p>But if someone referenced “Noah and Allie” in an essay roughly what percent of the people who might be admissions office readers would understand assuming a 50/50 male female split? Would that be more or less than those who would get a “Neo and Trinity” reference? ;
</p>
<p>Ryan Gosling? I know who he is, but I’ve never seen him in anything.
(I didn’t see The matrix either, but I know who Neo is)
My recent college grad, was so into the LOTR movies and books, read all of them.
I guess that was when she was in high school.
I doubt if she has seen The notebook, I haven’t, but she did see at least one of the Before Sunrise trilogy.
She’s not a big romantic. Me either.
I abhore " chic flicks", but I do actually like " Love Actually", and watch it every couple years.</p>
<p>I imagine that adcoms need to be more familiar than most people with teen speak & culture.</p>
<p>I did have a young love, who I met when I was 18.
- Reader, I married him.*
:)</p>
<p>I know who Neo and Trinity are. I know Lilo and Stich are animated characters, but nothing more. (I’m not a fan of Disney in general with a few exceptions.) Noah and Allie mean nothing to me. The first readers of most application essays will probably be in their 20s or 30s, so I’m not sure parents are the right judge of what should be obvious.</p>
<p>I’ve seen most of the movies saintfan has. :)</p>
<p>Most “iconic” movies are only iconic among certain demographics. There are comparatively fewer movies that are genuinely iconic for everyone. </p>
<p>I agree with Wasatch. I don’t know what Neo and Trinity was in reference to. I gather they are characters in the Matrix, which is a movie I’ve never seen and have zero interest in ever seeing. </p>
<p>My clients are invariably younger than I am and I have to watch what pop-culture references I make around them because it dates me / shows my age. My list of iconic movies, TV shows, moments-in-pop-culture are very different from theirs. I made reference to someone as being like Hawkeye in M<em>A</em>S*H - which is perfectly iconic for me - and it was like referring to Lawrence Welk or something. </p>
<p>I think to be safe you’d have to give some context - like “the love story between Noah and Allie in the Notebook” (which at least cues the viewer that it’s a love story rather than just “like Noah and Allie”. I have to say, I have seen the movie and wouldn’t kick Ryan Gosling out of bed for eating crackers but I don’t know that I would have immediately pulled up the characters’ names. </p>