(Spoiler Alert. I'm not really about spoilers, but I think for this review it’s going to take all the energy I have not to just blurt out the ending within the first couple of sentences, so bear with me.)
So I may have cried. Just a little, at certain parts. And then a little more when I realised the whole thing was going to end soon. And then maybe some more afterward. Okay, so I may have been crying on and off for the past twenty-four hours, alright?! To be honest, almost directly after watching Dear John I didn’t think I’d quite wrung myself dry, so I decided to pop on The Notebook (both films are based on books by author Nicholas Sparks), purely for artistic comparison I told myself. I’m a masochist.
Now before I entered the cinema I had realised the somewhat cliched nature of the movie’s title - I recognised vaguely the whole ‘Dear John letter’ thing: where girlfriends and wives wrote their soldiers lost at war (and the male lead’s name is John, and he’s a soldier. Genius) - but what I didn’t realise was the exact nature of said letters. Only now, probing Wikipedia, do I find out that the ‘Dear John letter’ was written precisely by girlfriends and wives to inform their lost soldiers that they’re not really into them anymore, more often than not because they’ve had enough of waiting and have found someone else (I don’t know if I’m revealing my incredible ignorance here. Is this a well-known fact? I can be pretty slow on the uptake). Anyway it’s fair enough I suppose, I guess I’m just treating it so spitefully because the bitch Amanda Seyfried left Channing out in the cold. In a letter. I mean, c’mon Seyfried, this is the twenty-first century, there are a whole lot of communicative channels open to you. Maybe I should be glad she didn’t just do it over Facebook. I guess the letter is more romantic.
Okay I should probably give you the 411 right about now. Dear John follows the (tragic?) love story of college student Savannah (Seyfried) and American Special Services Officer John (Tatum). She's on Spring Break and he's on leave, in Charleston, and there they spend two magical weeks together. So with John dragged back into the war (and, unbeknownst to him, with 911 approaching) the pair agree to exchange letters, in order to 'be with each other always'...and I've already let the ending slip, about two thirds of the way through the film we realise Savannah's up and left him for another guy (there are more details than that, and I guess she’s not that bad, but I’ll leave that for you to determine).
This defines just one of the many similarities between Dear John and The Notebook; both men stay at least semi-faithful while they allow the female lead to find herself / be free / fall in love with someone else (except maybe Ryan Gosling, he had Martha. But it was just sex, wasn’t it? He never actually loved her, and she was totally in on the arrangement, so it’s okay). I sound grossly anti-feminist and that’s not the case at all! I think it’s simply because I invest in a romantic movie because I’m guaranteed a happy ending; they’re a safe bet, so unlike anything we slam into in real life. That’s where Dear John differs from its blockbuster counterpart. The Notebook sees its lovers reunite, after years apart, through misunderstanding, differing social standings, war, bloody interfering parents and illness. And that’s the way it should be. But Dear John went for a little more reality. Even though Seyfried and Tatum decide they’re meant for each other after a mere two weeks, Seyfriend realises the mortality of their relationship, and of love, and makes do with what she has, simply to survive the unendurable pain of being without the one you’re ‘supposed’ to be with.
Plot aside, I surprisingly still enjoyed the movie. Ever since Mean Girls I’ve been a fan of Amanda Seyfried’s and, flawed character aside, her performance was pretty faultless. Plus she’s gorgeous, so extra points. Channing Tatum, well let’s just say I don’t believe there is actually any angle from which you can look at him and not swoon. Even with that patch of stubble he attempts to pass off as some sort of tough guy beard. And though we all knew this from Step Up (go on, admit it, you watched it and loved it), Dear John reveals he’s actually a decent actor. The film is most definitely centered around the male lead, focusing especially on John’s relationship with his autistic father (Richard Jenkins, who is for me best known for his role as Nathaniel Fisher in Six Feet Under, just quietly one of the greatest television dramas to date). He lives up to his reputation entirely and contributed in no small part to me having to lunge for the tissues every ten minutes or so.
All in all, I think I’m actually going to say Dear John almost lived up to my ridiculously high standards. I say almost, but that's pretty damn good. It’s a soppy, ‘girly’ romantic drama that uses certain cinematic tools to hype its story into some kind of epic romance for the ages, but then again it never pretended to be anything else. And sure, of course I want true love to exist and for these two characters to find it, reaffirm that belief for me, and have a happy ending, but you can’t have everything.