<P> Many of the scenes set in Seabrook were filmed in the town of Mt . Pleasant, (a suburb of Charleston). Others were filmed in Charleston and in Edisto Island . The lake scenes were filmed at Cypress Gardens (in Moncks Corner, South Carolina) with trained birds that were brought in from elsewhere . </P> <P> The nursing home scenes were filmed at Rice Hope Plantation, located in Georgetown County, South Carolina . The college depicted briefly in the film is identified in the film as Sarah Lawrence College, but the campus that is seen is actually the College of Charleston . </P> <P> The film premiered June 25, 2004, in the United States and Canada and grossed $13,464,745 in 2,303 theaters its opening weekend, ranking number 4 at the box office . The film grossed a total of $115,603,229 worldwide, $81,001,787 in Canada and the United States and $34,601,442 in other countries . It is the 15th highest - grossing romantic drama film of all time . </P> <P> The Notebook received a mixed reaction from film critics . Based on 155 reviews on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 52% of critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.7 / 10 and the website's consensus stating "It's hard not to admire its unabashed sentimentality, but The Notebook is too clumsily manipulative to rise above its melodramatic clichés ." At Metacritic, which assigns an average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film currently holds an average score of 53, based on 34 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews ." </P>

When did the movie the notebook come out