Dear John (2010)

Horror. Comedy. Thriller. Movies based on books by Nicholas Sparks. The last of these is fast becoming a genre all its own, synonymous with star-crossed romances – with lovers that may or may not die – designed make you weep. Dear John fits in pretty well with the rest.

In it, a young Army Special Forces soldier named John Tyree (Channing Tatum) comes home to Carolina on leave from Germany. His time off happens to correspond with the spring break of a pretty girl named Savannah (Amanda Seyfried). When John dives off a 20-foot pier to rescue her fallen handbag from the ocean, she is understandably impressed. She is even more so when he emerges from the water to reveal his mile-wide shoulder span and six-pack abs.

Over the course of the next two weeks, the pair falls in love over a montage of surfing lessons, freak rainstorms, family dinners, and gazing at the moon. Maybe it’s the soft focus camera lenses that make John’s eyes sparkle and Savannah’s hair glow, or maybe it’s the folk-lite love songs playing softly in the background, but you know that this is the sweet, sincere, forever kind of love. They know it, too.

So when the two must return to their respective corners of the world – she to school and he to his military base in Germany – they decide to keep their spring romance in bloom until his commitment is up in a year. They start sending each other letters as often as possible, giving the film its title. Cue even more montages of John writing letters from his barracks in distant lands, while Savannah reads them by the dimmed lights of her campus lecture halls. The montages should grow tiresome, but our young lovers are so attractive and endearing that it takes a while before it does.

But these love-soaked letter-writing days don’t last forever. They are interrupted on September 11, 2001. John, torn between love and duty, ends up choosing his country. This means that he has to re-up for another three years, leaving behind not only Savannah (and her would-be suitors) but also his coin-collecting dad (Richard Jenkins), who has no other meaningful human interactions. In fact, Savannah is convinced that Mr. Tyree has a form of autism, a condition she is familiar with through her lifelong friendship with Tim (Henry Thomas) and his autistic son.

In true Nicholas Sparks style, this additional unexpected absence opens the door to John’s potential death, all sorts of romantic complications, and, of course, that other kind of Dear John letter. But the screenplay, adapted by Jamie Linden, has some decidedly un-Sparks-like moments, including one where Savannah jokingly tells John that she’s dying. It’s like the 30-second antidote to the hours of self-righteousness in A Walk to Remember. It’s also a nice complement to the earnestness that director Lasse Hallstrom (finding more pedestrian work now that Miramax is officially dead) brings to the affair.

But no one is more earnest in Dear John than the film’s two young stars. What Tatum lacks in skill as an actor, he makes up for in square-jawed, broad shouldered alpha-male likeability; it’s a breath of fresh air in this age of the too-sensitive leading man. Seyfried is becoming quite adept at turning roles that lesser actresses would whiff on into something far better than thought possible. Unfortunately, so much of the film is letter-writing montage that we don’t see nearly enough of her. It’s good that her voice is as pretty and soothing as her actual presence. It’s a trait that makes her all the more suited to be a soldier’s woman.

Dear John is exactly what it promises to be in its Snow Patrol-scored trailer: a sweet, weepy romance. Nothing more and nothing less. But, then, doesn’t everybody need a good cry from time to time?