Movie Review: Dear John

Dear John (2010) 

Directed by Lasse Hallstrom

Written by Jamie Linden 

Starring Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Richard Jenkins 

Release Date February 5th, 2010

Published February 4th, 2010 

Dear John is a romance starring actor Channing Tatum's abs and actress Amanda Seyfried's eyes. As he takes his shirt off to reveal his ripples her wide, deep eyes travel the lengths of his musculature and boom you have a movie. This will be enough to satisfy the depraved teenage girls whose eyes will also travel the full length of Mr. Tatum's tummy again and again.

For the rest of us however, those not inclined to stare longingly at Mr. Tatum's Playgirl centerfold audition, Dear John is a dreary bore of romantic cliché and moony mawkishness.

I already described the plot, he takes his shirt off, she stares, the end, but I am sure some of you would like a little more detail. After all, Dear John did not begin life as an adaptation of Jergen De Mey's bestseller The Action Hero Body but rather as an adaptation of one of Nicholas Sparks's astonishing series of simpleminded romance hits.

Dear John tells the story of John, how inventive right. John is a soldier who while home on leave in early 2001 meets cute with Savannah (Seyfried) when she loses her purse in the ocean and he dives in to save it. She's with a boy when this happens but he has a shirt on, John doesn't and his glistening, rippling self is all it takes for that guy to go away, hell I can't even remember who he was.

John joins Savannah for a party at her home and an introduction to the special needs child she spends time with seals their fate as lifetime lovers. The love birds spend the summer together, her appreciating his repeated shirtlessness, he staring longingly if emptily into her wide pool-like eyes. Things are said but nothing is more important than their respective beauty.

Then John has to ship out and since this story is set in 2001 there is a pretty big twist coming up, wink wink. Yes, 9/11 is a plot point in this dopey romance and as the film manages to make sex, romance, mental illness, war and death trivial even the deadliest terror attack in American history can be rendered inferior when compared to the romance of two extraordinarily self important beautiful people.

What is supposed to be dramatic and romantic is captured by director Lasse Hallstrom in his typically vacant, pretty postcard style. It's a style that is relatively well placed in a film about two pretty people being pretty and for those who watch with the sound off, the style may enhance the experience. This is not an option of course for most theatergoers who will have to endure dialogue so benign and simple you can hear the breeze emanating in the characters ears as they speak. Cheesy platitudes meet at the intersection exposition and bland pop music scoring to create a mind numbing throb of vapidity. 

An ode to the ab workout, Dear John succeeds in providing fantasy material for those inclined toward Channing Tatum's rippling-ness. Otherwise, the film is one massive bore that manages to trivialize war, sex, autism and yes even 9/11. It's really rather remarkable that a film could be so offensive in such a forgettable fashion. Dear John is so dull that I can hardly muster the bile to be offended by it.