DVD review: Dear John

A soldier enlisted abroad falls in love with a young girl at home.

This is not really my genre of movies but I was curious about this one. To scathing reviews it managed to dethrone “Avatar” from the box office top while collecting more than 100 millions along the way.

This is certainly not a very good movie, the plot starts in a fairly linear and relatable way but it quickly degrades in a hopeless mess, the pacing is glacial while the characters are living clichés.

Yet this movie faced the issue of the Iraq war with much more box office success than legions of critically acclaimed efforts. Probably the general public doesn’t really want to hear that war is a bad thing, most likely they already know that and generally speaking the war in Iraq is a really depressing affair, nothing that inspire “Epic war film”. So when “Dear John” quietly shoves everything under the carpet because John can’t tell us what he’s doing for security reasons the public is left with the sad and stony eyes of John Tyree (Channing Tatum) where they can project they feelings and their insecurities. This clearly struck a chord somewhere, apparently we don’t want to see what they are doing in the desert, we just want to cuddle them when they come back.

Now this is actually a good thing, every movie should be judged on his own terms so even if I find John Tyree a terrible and boring character the silent but strong type is a mainstay of romantic movies so disapproving of him is like banning elves from fantasy. The reason this is still very bad is that Channing Tatum is one of those pouty “I got only one facial expression” guys, he really lacks the intensity that a role that is required by the role.

Also the ritual “Now a bunch of complications separates the star crossed lovers” is plotted and handed very badly. The characters don’t react in a believable way and it’s all so confused.

Amanda Seyfried of course was born for roles like this but while she manages to sail through the first part practically on the strength of her indubitable charm alone not even her smile manages to salvage the ending, she is good but not even an Oscar winner could do that.

For all the mess that is the plot the direction is by a spotless Lasse Hallstrom who manages trough sheer cinematographic experience to craft a watchable movie, albeit with a lot of help from Seyfried.

In the end if you like romantic movies go for it, maybe you’ll even love it.