Directed by Lasse Hallström
(PG-13)
**
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A young couple is torn apart by 9/11.
Dear John is like “a very bad relationship with a very beautiful someone,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. As much as you want to fall in love with it, you just can’t bring yourself to. In this weepie, based on another of Nicholas Sparks’ best-selling romances, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried play star-crossed lovers John and Savannah. After a whirlwind summer romance, John returns to Army duty and Savannah to university. They vow to keep their romance aflame by writing letters, but 9/11 throws a wrench in their plan. Long-distance relationships are difficult enough, but Dear John tacks on “more handicaps and hardships than any film can survive,” said Kirk Honeycutt in The Hollywood Reporter. All the sentimental elements—America’s greatest trauma, a wounded vet, and not one but two family members with autism—feel like “so many tugs on the heartstrings.” Just try to resist, said Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. Sparks’ stories have always dabbled in melodrama, but Dear John delivers the sort of old-fashioned story of love and loyalty that we rarely see on the screen today.
