Dear John is a 2010 American romantic drama-war film starring Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum. The movie extends to the eventual love between a soldier deployed to war and a conservative college girl.
What starts as a charming anachronism %u2014 pens, paper and the postal service in an impersonal digital age %u2014 becomes tedious as Hallstrom is reduced to interminable, repetitive montages covering the many months that the pair are apart.
Dear John is built on mawkishness and it brings everything it touches down to that level. It rubs the metaphor of coins and coin collecting so deeply into the audience face you're sure to have a welt by the time the movie's over.
The biggest surprise here is Tatum, whose butch reticence has never been put to better use: His saddest farewell isn't to his lady but to a man even more uncommunicative than he is.
Halfway through the movie, I decided a better title for this weepie contraption would be The Hurt Letter. Tatum is stolid and semi-expressive, Seyfried widens her eyes to saucer-size.
