MOVIE REVIEW: DEAR JOHN (2010)
The romance movie is as old as cinema itself. Many theatergoers enjoy a tale of building romance and overcoming obstacles that threaten to keep lovers apart. Over time, however, all genres run the risk of running out of new ideas, and romance has been among the hardest hit. While Nicholas Sparks has made a successful career out of recycling familiar romance story ingredients in his books, expanding his audience through film continues to be a tough sell. Dear John is only the third Spark’s adaptation I have seen, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had seen much of this sort of thing before. Soldier John Tyree is badly wounded during combat in Afghanistan and blacks out after a voiceover professes his last thought about “you.” We then flash back to a few years before, when John meets a college student named Savannah while he is on leave in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina in 2001. There is mutual attraction and they each introduce the other to some important people in their l...
