Dear John

Dear Reader,

It is that time again. Time for another Nicholas Sparks novel to hit the big screen ( or in my case, my living room television set because Dear John is a fairly new release on DVD ). Now I know that you are probably really excited to see this film because you just cannot get enough Nicholas Sparks, but allow me to save you the time and the money by saying if you want more Nicholas Sparks, stick to reading this book.

So you have not read this book yet and you do not know what this story is about? Well then I guess it is a good thing that I am here. Dear John brings us the story of a U.S.lieutenant named John who returns to his hometown while on leave.Here, John fishes a purse out of the ocean for a girl he meets named Savannah and soon after the two of them hit it off which eventually unwinds a web of drama, trademark of Nicholas Sparks.

Nicholas Sparks  may be considered the greatest romance novelist of our time and able to turn out emotional stories that definitely beat anything Hollywood could turn out on its own, but the fact is they just do not make great movies. Dear John is not a good movie. The actors can shout and cry but none of it is convincing enough to make this film entertaining. In fact, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried could win Buster Keaton awards for terrific stonface acting ( I do not know if there is such an award but there should be ). Almost the entire rising action consist of voiceover readings of John and Savannah's letters to each other shown to a montage of war scenes.  Lasse Hallström will not win any awards for direction in this film. There was hardly any camera movement and drama demands camera movement. This film was pretty much all still shots of people talking back and forth to each other.

The heart of this Nicholas Sparks' story is good, as is in all of his stories, but Dear John does not cut it as a  good movie.

Disregard this film.

With strong contempt for this movie,
JP