Dear John **
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Is it worth $10? No
Weepy tearjerker movies can be a tough watch, especially for guys who lack the patience or inclination to indulge in melodrama. I do my best to not be one of those guys, and because of that I can say that “Dear John” was viewed with an open mind and an open heart. And it still wasn’t very good.
It’s not necessarily the depressing nature of director Lasse Hallstrom’s (“The Cider House Rules”) movie that is its undoing, it’s the forced and cluttered story. Screenwriter Jamie Linden crams as much of Nicholas Sparks’ (“The Notebook”) source material into the movie as possible, and as a result little registers and the heart of the movie is lost.
It starts, as movies of young love are wont to do, on spring break. It’s 2000, and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) is enjoying her time away from college on the Carolina shore. She’s a healthy spirit who’s conservative and pretty, as pure as a heroine can be. Her beau is John (Channing Tatum), an army officer on temporary leave to visit his emotionally distant father (Richard Jenkins). Savannah and John fall in love, and after two weeks he swears to marry her when he completes his deployment.
Much of the movie chronicles how Savannah and John’s love grows organically via their love letters, which each sends regularly. This part of the movie works. Their relationship evolves from infatuation to genuine love, and as they grow fond of one another we’re happy to root for them.
It’s when John comes home for a short weekend that complications ensue, namely due to 9/11 putting pressure on John to stay in the army. If it were just the troubles of their relationship it’d be enough, but there’s so much excess drama with John’s father, Savannah’s friend Tim (Henry Thomas), John at war, etc., that it all feels overwhelming. In short, there’s too much going on for the movie’s own good.
Perhaps surprisingly, the performances from Seyfried and Tatum are effective. Though Seyfried’s wide-eyed innocent and Tatum’s tough guy soldier are variations on roles they’ve played before (in “Mamma Mia!” and “G.I. Joe,” respectively), each reaches a convincing level of yearning that allows the love story to work.
If only they were in a better movie. Adaptations from novels are a difficult task, and the mistake most often made is remaining too loyal to the source material and not cutting out excess in an effort to appeal to the built-in fan base. This is laudable, but not practical; the filmmaker’s challenge is to make the best movie possible, as ultimately the film will stand on its own and either work or not. “Dear John” does not work.
Did you know?
Tatum got to know a number of soldiers while preparing for “G. I. Joe,” and he used those interactions to play John. “So many of them are just normal guys,” Tatum said of the soldiers he met. “They have a sort of quietness about them – there’s always some stillness in their eyes.”
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