{"id":10736,"date":"2010-07-12T07:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-11T23:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/07\/12\/dear-john\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:46:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:46:43","slug":"dear-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/07\/12\/dear-john\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear John"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-dearjohn-01\" Dear John<\/em><\/strong> (2010) \u2013 on rental. The other romantic drama to arrive while I was away was Dear John, <\/em>a film starring Channing Tatum, the beefcake previously seen in G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra<\/a><\/em>, and up and coming young actress Amanda Seyfried.<\/p>\n

The film is an adaptation of a book of the same name by Nicholas Sparks, though Internet pundits are saying is only a \u2018loose\u2019 adaptation. Still, that it\u2019s supposedly coming (somewhat at least) from Sparks\u2019 material should immediately tell you loads about what the film involves: tragedy, love, and lots of kleenex. Tatum plays John, a serving member of a \u2018Special Forces\u2019 unit with the US Army, who\u2019s on vacation leave. He meets Savannah, a college student on spring break. The two hit off immediately, and within the short fortnight of leave, fall in love. John returns to active service for a year, and the two begin a long correspondence of letters to each other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty familiar with the film\u2019s context to be sure. Our courtship days were mostly via long-distance, and communication for at least 80% off the time I knew Ling prior to our marital engagement. We were all on MSN, emails and phone-calls. In fact, we became a \u2018success\u2019 story for a certain Government social agency\u2019s portal here, and the published interview we had was centered on debunking two popular theories: firstly that long-distance relationships don\u2019t work, and secondly that it\u2019s madness to be in a relationship with someone doing a Ph.D.<\/p>\n

I expect films based on Sparks\u2019 material to be manipulative. In all the film adaptations of his books, you routinely get the whole machinery working in overdrive to elicit \u201cawwwws\u201d and tears from you: the music, the virtuous characters in difficult situations, dialog, and the story situations and setups.<\/p>\n

\n

However, even allowing for lots of compensation for the way the film tries to get those specific reactions from you, the film\u2019s just not very good in so many other respects. The most serious one: the major plot point which sets up conflict between Savannah and John \u2013 specifically that Savannah leaves John for someone else – and the tone for the last one third of the film is based off an off-camera action that isn\u2019t just poorly related in dialog, but it\u2019s absurd to begin with as there was very little material in the film earlier on to establish a significant possibility of that action happening to begin with.<\/p>\n

And while the film\u2019s outdoor locations of South Carolina are lovely in Spring, the numerous scenes depicting John \u201cat work\u201d and at war are terrible. Specifically, they look utterly fake and even more low-budget than current TV productions based on war themes. Ok, so some of us who aren\u2019t as interested in battle scenes can\u2019t tell or won\u2019t mind. But trust me when I say this: if a major story point in your film is about the long physical distances separating your couple in love, not putting enough effort to dress up those far flung locations so that they don\u2019t look like your neighboring film lots isn\u2019t going to do you any favors.<\/p>\n

\n

As for the acting\u2026 oh the horror. As impossible as this might sound, Keanu Reeves has a new rival when it comes to playing wood. Tatum\u2019s great when it comes to physical roles, but expecting him to play dramatic leads like in Dear John<\/em> is just too much for the actor. Seyfried fares slightly better with those huge expressive eyes of hers but she\u2019s got loads of bad dialog to utter out still.<\/p>\n

On balance; this film will work for the ardent fans of films based on Sparks\u2019 books. If you don\u2019t mind the terrible dialog and acting performances, the film does succeed in pulling those heartstrings. To this end, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a total loss.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear John (2010) \u2013 on rental. The other romantic drama to arrive while I was away was Dear John, a film starring Channing Tatum, the beefcake previously seen in G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and up and coming<\/p>\n

Read More Dear John<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[592],"class_list":["post-10736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","tag-wedding","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}