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It's like a bad soap opera.
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.
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.
Indecently exploits 9/11 and throws in autism and canver for unscrupulous measure.
I just did not get pulled in.
Dear John carefully distills selected elements of human experience and reduces them to a sweet and digestible syrup. It may not be strong medicine, but it delivers an effective, pleasing dose of pure sentiment and vicarious heartache.
You could hate it for being cynically tear-jerking... [but] it can't help itself.
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.
Mawkish romantic melodrama creates no sparks.
It's more Scenes from a Marriage than Dirty Dancing.
Another "timeless' romance from the pen of Shakespeare-level genius Nicholas Sparks made into a mediocre movie starring pretty young people ...They have an epistolary romance.
Suds maven Sparks sets up Seyfried for hottie sainthood as a southern belle who confuses love with a medical pity party, while coin collecting is diagnosed as autism and Tatum as Ahab pursues his Afghan white whale. Blame it on Osama.
Like a couple of hours of channel-surfing among the Travel Channel, the History Channel and Discovery Health. [Blu-ray]
A remarkable image and sound presentation dignifies this DVD release of Lasse Hallström's latest cheesefest.
Achieves its modest, unpretentious goals in an agreeable, likable fashion.
Of course, there are some things you can always count on in a Sparks adaptation - sandy locations, star-crossed lovers and searing melodrama, all tied in a neat emotionally manipulative bow.
Tatum makes what use he can of his two expressions, Seyfried does her best to perk things up and much the best performer is Richard Jenkins...
Prettifies heartache and hardship to the point where it barely has any meaning at all.
Their romance fizzles out in their letters to each other, and the plot gets lost in the post.
It's a shame the whole thing resembles a schmaltzy video for a wet female singer, as there's some real pain here and a twist that retains an impact somewhere deep in the chest.
A touching melodrama illuminated by a solid turn from Tatum.
A sucker for a cheap sob, it left me cold.
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