By Marie Straub
Nicholas Sparks (
Message in a Bottle; A Walk to Remember; The Notebook; Nights In Rodanthe) keeps telling the same story. Am I really the only one that has noticed this? I sure as hell hope not. Basically, it goes something like this: boy meets girl and they fall in love. Pretty standard, but please note that in this scenario the kind of love I’m talking about is specifically the kind in which the boy totally loses his head for the girl in question. In other words, this is not Cinderella’s story – at home pining for Prince Charming – we’re talking about Prince Charming’s story, and watching him as he negotiates life, madly obsessed with the girl who should fit the slipper. There’s only one thing to be said – the ladies are loving it. And they’ll be loving it even more in the latest Sparks novel to make it to the big screen,
Dear John. And why, you may ask, will they be loving it even more? Two words. Channing Tatum. Without his shirt on. For large portions of the movie. OK, so that’s twelve words, but you get the idea.
Sparks’s latest novel to make it to film is in the hands of Swedish director, Lasse Hallström (
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape; The Cider House Rules; Chocolat) and tells the love story of John (Channing Tatum) and Savannah (Amanda Seyfried), a young couple who meet on a beach in South Carolina. He is a Special Forces soldier on leave visiting his father, she a young college student from a wealthy Southern family home for spring break. They fall hard and fast – and I’m talking the end-of-the-world; can-move-mountains; reason-for-living kind of epic-love which most people don’t find in their two-week holiday romances, but always find in the movies. Their lives intertwine as Savannah spends more and more time with John’s withdrawn and somewhat obsessive father (Richard Jenkins), realising ultimately that he has undiagnosed autism. When, just two weeks after meeting, John returns to duty and Savannah to college, they promise to write to each other and so their love grows through the letters that travel across the ocean, giving the film its title. As they live waiting for each letter and planning for what little time they can get together, looking toward the day when John’s tour will be over, their dreams of a future are thrown into disarray when 11 September leaves John feeling duty-bound to return to service. Where that will leave the two of them, is the battleground on which the remainder of the film fights itself out.

There is a lot that should make this film a sure-fire win. Hallström knows how to make a visually beautiful film, and he’s done that here. Seyfried shows again why she is one of the most exciting prospects of her generation, with her unique ability to play what could veer toward intolerable melodrama with a light genuineness that is infinitely watchable. Her chemistry with Tatum is also noteworthy, and that’s not even to get to what that boy looks like with his shirt off? His acting is not half-bad either. Jenkins, in turn, is a veteran and not an
Academy Award-nominee for nothing. His rendering of John’s autistic father provides a gentle and genuine weight to this second, but just as significant story line. So, with all these pluses, why do I sound a little less than ecstatic? Because I’ve seen it before. Whether I would have liked this film more had I not known it was the latest Sparks offering, I will never know, but it’s a definite possibility. I usually enjoy Hallström’s work and, as I have demonstrated, the film is not without merit. Any hope it had at offering mystery; surprise; or an unsuspected turn of events was dashed from the moment I saw Sparks’s name in the opening credits. His stories have become like M. Night Shyamalan’s – formulaic to the point that you see them coming a mile off. Two people more in love than it should be possible for two people to be – check. Something huge, in this case war, to separate them – check. The mistaken assumption by one of the parties, usually male, that the other has given up on them – check. Some cancer and some death – check. The revelation that epic-insurmountable-odds love is exactly that - epic and insurmountable, regardless of the odds, final check. The father story-line was my favourite thing about this film, and if it had played less of a second string to the rest may well have resulted in something noteworthy. Without it, I would have hated the film, even despite Tatum’s abs. With it, the film makes it into almost-interesting-if-it-weren’t-so-predictable territory.

Will Sparks get out his notebook and pen another dear John letter about a walk to remember or a night in Rodanthe, to be rolled up and placed in a bottle, or is this his last song to be tossed into the sea? No, in truth
The Last Song is the title of the next film (already completed) from his pen and another,
The Lucky One, is apparently in production. Speaking of luck, he’ll either have to break his mould or have enough of it left to land both a spectacular cast and a director of Hallström’s calibre if he hopes to have even a shot at three stars from me again. Three stars is what this one gets, and the ladies, I predict, will just keep on loving it.
Dear John is on at Nu Metro cinemas from 19 February 2010.