Film Reviews: Dear John

Apr 15

Film Reviews: Dear John

The Notebook. Do these two words have any effect on you? If it is overwhelming but life-affirming heartbreak coupled with a quivering bottom lip, then by all means go right ahead and subject yourself to Dear John. If it was agonising pain, red rage and rush-for-the-toilet nausea that you felt, then you should not only avoid Lasse Hallström's worthless weepy like the plague, but be careful to steer clear of all promos, trailers and TV spots lest you become infected by its shamelessly manipulative awfulness. Either way, there will be tears.

A two-week romance between insular, meathead marine John (Channing Tatum) and soft, kindly and impossibly virtuous Savannah (Amanda Seyfried, clearly a star), ends when the soldier has to return to duty. Luckily for Cupid, their lovely love is sustained by pen, paper and the promise of a life together when his tour ends. However, pesky Osama Bin Laden puts a couple of jet-liners in the works and it all goes terror shaped; John can't leave his band of brothers behind and Savannah needs to make the most heartbreaking decision of all. Not sad enough? Fine, let's throw in everything from autism to cancer, from widowers to wheelchairs, to get those tear ducts leaking like a busted tap.

All these staples of crass movie weepage are, of course, to be expected from the mind of The Notebook scribe Nicholas Sparks and director Hallström, whose cannon of worthy but horribly contrived films includes The Cider House Rules and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. What cannot be expected or excused is just how badly the pooch was screwed in the casting of the titular lead, how utterly one-note his relationship with Seyfried is, and just how uninteresting any plot developments that follow are. Imagine, if you will, Wayne Rooney attempting to act. It's very bad, isn't it? Well, Channing Tatum is worse than that. A lot worse than that. Quite how he is considered to be anything but an underwear model or, at a stretch, a straight-to-DVD martial arts star is a mystery to rival actor Bill Pullman's appeal. Casting a watery-eyed fratboy as your lead - as opposed to The Notebook's supremely talented Ryan Gosling - hamstrings the film from frame one, as everything fails from then on. Plenty of J-Crew catalogue beach-walking, kissing in the rain, wretched dialogue ('Your war is over John...'), child friendly combat footage and, most cringeworthy, a montage played out to Savannah's acoustic guitar warblings. Dear oh dear.

Written by :

Michael Pope

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