Dear John: Movie Review

Nicholas Sparks' novels is almost synonymous to romantic films nowadays. Countless film adaptations of his books are all over the place. The latest of which is "Dear John". Now honestly, we know what to expect from a Nicholas Sparks' novel or a film version to say the least - a nice, love story that does not always end on a happy note and will make you cry buckets of tears. On our count though, we have only liked half of the films based on his books. With "Dear John", can Nicholas Sparks make a positive mark on us once more or can this prove that they should just stop making adaptations of his books? Read on to find out what we have to say.

In 2001, Savannah Lynn Curtis (Amanda Seyfried) is having her spring break when she accidentally meets John Tyree (Channing Tatum) - a native of her vacation spot. They met when John dove into the water to get Savannah's bag that fell into the sea and the two jive almost immediately. Savannah discovers though that John is a member of the Army Special Forces and he has only two weeks left before being assigned to his post abroad. They spend the two weeks getting to know each other more and eventually getting into a relationship. When the two weeks are up, the two decide to have a long distance relationship by writing letters to each other. After one year of service, the two meet up again but John has grim news - he wants to stay two years longer because of what happened on 9/11.

After the success of The Notebook, Message in a Bottle and Walk to Remember, the quality of Sparks' adaptations pretty much has gone on a downhill trend. "Dear John" bewilders us - it had us going more than a majority of the film but totally blows it off in the twist towards the end. Without giving details, let us just say that it was totally weird and out-of-this-world that it will either make you see the story as unbelievable or you will really hate a certain character. In any case, it totally sucked out all the goodness that happened before it and all the drama was kaput. We do not know who to blame here, the original book narrative or how they executed it in the film. The actors were a saving grace in the movie as Channing and Amanda were beautiful together and they played their roles well (even though their characters seemed to good to be real). We just hope they're given better material. In summary, "Dear John" had its moments but as an overall package, we really cannot recommend it that much. This is not exactly the lovestory you might want to see.

Rating: 3 reels

Why you should watch it:
- it had good portions of drama and sweetness
- if you like the Nicholas Sparks formula, then this should be a good film for you

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- really baffling twist that ruined the whole feel of the film
- very poor material for such a talented cast

Do not forget that you can subscribe for FREE to our RSS Feed via Email

You can also follow us at our Twitter Account by clicking here

You can also add our site toolbar for FREE by clicking here