Even a crocodile couldn't muster up tears for this story

A few decades ago, the accepted industry term for movies in the tear-jerking milieu of Dear John was a "weepie."

Dear John comes with formidable weepie credentials, including direction by Lasse Hallstrom (The Cider House Rules; What's Eating Gilbert Grape) and the fact it's an adaptation of a novel by Nicholas Sparks. Surely the unofficial king of the weepies, Sparks's adaptations include Nights in Rodanthe (sob), The Notebook (choke) and A Walk to Remember (blubber).

The opening scene of this film may fake you out from any Harlequin Romance expectations as army ranger John Tyree (Channing Tatum) takes a couple of bullets in combat in the Middle East.

A feature-length flashback takes us to a scenic South Carolina beach where John meets cute with college student Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) by diving off a dock to rescue her purse. Impressed with his ripped physique and his quiet intensity, Savannah is smitten, and she's not put off to learn John had a past as a local hellraiser.

Savannah has a few things John lacks, including friends, whose numbers include Tim (Henry Thomas), a neighbour who harbours protective feelings towards Savannah -- and maybe more. Tim is raising an autistic son, while his wife isn't returning from an extended "vacation" in the foreseeable future.

When John is not on duty, he stays with his uncommunicative, coin-collecting dad (Richard Jenkins). The guileless Savannah suggests he appears himself to be autistic, and John is sufficiently miffed that they break up. Then they make up, and John promises to return to her after his tour of duty.

It's the spring of 2001.

As it turns out, duty is a double-edged sword that wounds both Savannah and John in the course of their relationship, which is destined to play itself out in the letters exchanged between the separated lovers (a favourite Sparks device).

In the real world, post-9/11 conflict was fraught with bad politics and scandal and you'd think that subject might have come up in correspondence between a soldier and a college student.

The movie, which appears to have been vetted by an army censor, steers carefully clear of that. Mostly, there's so much goodness and noble sacrifice going on in Dear John, the movie begins to feel airless, like a pretty love story between two saints. Between them, Channing and Seyfried are fully capable of generating heat, but the movie is calculatedly stripped of the textures and tensions of real sexual desire.

If it weren't for Jenkins' portrayal of John's father, the movie might have failed to have much real life in it at all. As it is, the father-son relationship, relegated to subplot, is the only love story in Dear John worthy of a good weep.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 5, 2010 D4