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I love a good romantic movie. No, really, I do. I even love them when they’re over-the-top like “Gone With the Wind,” or silly and a little predictable like “When Harry Met Sally.”
What I do not like is a bad romance movie. And “Dear John” is one of the worst I’ve seen.
The movie, based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, follows rough soldier John (Channing Tatum) and sweet college student Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) as they fall in love while he’s on leave and she’s on spring break in Charleston, S.C. They frolic on the beach, make out in the rain and spend time with John’s hermit, and possibly autistic, father (Richard Jenkins) and Savannah’s next-door neighbor, Tim (Henry Thomas) and his autistic son, Allen.
But two weeks later, of course, Savannah must go back to college and John must be deployed for one more year. Sept. 11, 2001, changes his plan, though, and he re-enlists for another two years. Throughout the time they’re apart, they write letters back and forth.
Ugh. Where to begin? First of all, the whole sweet rich girl/rough poor boy plotline. It’s way overdone. Nicholas Sparks seems incapable of getting away from that setup — he used it in “The Notebook” and “A Walk to Remember,” too. It was cliched then, and it’s even more cliched now.
Another plot device that Sparks loves to use (and overuse) is the heartwrenching “twist,” often involving a romanticized version of a deadly disease. There were two of them in this movie, and by the end I nearly couldn’t take it anymore. I won’t spoil the movie, if you are crazy enough to actually want to experience it for yourself, but the second of the “twists” made me wish I had a desk so I could bang my head against it.
I might have been able to handle the derivative plot, if it would have been a bit snappier, but it was plodding and melodramatic, complete with awkward dialogue. A sample:
Savannah: “You don’t scare me, John.”
John: “Well, you scare me.”
Then they kissed. In the rain. If that’s not melodramatic and trite, I don’t know what is.
Like every other movie I’ve ever seen based on a Nicholas Sparks movie, “Dear John” seemed to be calculated to make everybody cry their eyes out, and that annoys me. If you want me to cry, don’t just load it with a bunch of “noble” characters and make terrible things happen to them. That’s just lazy writing. Make me connect with the characters, and make me feel their pain.
If you’ve seen one Nicholas Sparks movie, you’ve seen “Dear John.” Skip it. Trust me.
Jenny’s Take: See it only if it can’t be avoided.
(Rated PG-13 for some sensuality and violence. Runs 105 minutes.)
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